


The Beast that Chose Its Own Bridle

by thespectaclesofthor



Category: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Genre: Aftercare, An unequivocally happy ending because they earned it, Anal Sex, Angst, BDSM, Blowjobs, Canon typical lack of safewords, Chronic Pain, Disability, Disordered Eating, Dissociation, Dominance/submission, Edging, Felix whump, Fingering, Flashbacks, Humiliation, Hurt/Comfort, Impact Play, Inspection, Internalised ableism, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Magical Healing BDSM, Masochism, Mental Illness, Mental Institutions, Mildmay and Felix Brother Feels, Miscommunication and Communication, Outdated Mental Health Attitudes, PTSD, Possession and Hauntings, Post Book 4, Praise Kink, Sadism, Shame, So many more kinks than what is listed here, Soft Flogging, Sounding, Spanking, Subdrop, Suicidal Ideation, Tarquin-Martyr system vs. Flame-Shadow system: FIGHT, Triggers, Unpacking ableism, age gap, blindfold, dubious consent (because of the aforementioned tag), traumatic past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:41:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 182,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21533146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thespectaclesofthor/pseuds/thespectaclesofthor
Summary: The Duke of Murtagh has never been able to forget his one evening with Felix Harrowgate, back when he knew Felix only as a shadow for hire. In the two years since, everything has changed, and Murtagh’s circumstances have shifted enough that he’s curious to pursue the lonely magician who lives at the Grimglass lighthouse.
Relationships: Felix Harrowgate/Murtagh | Ferrand Carey
Comments: 889
Kudos: 471





	1. Tension

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what I'm doing and the chapter count is a guess. I'm actually a Mildmay/Felix shipper, but the fic for Felix/Murtagh pinged me harder, and then hit me like 'WRITE ME WRITE ME NOW' so basically that's what I'm doing. It is basically a multi-chaptered version of 'Murtagh runs into a billion triggers of Felix's, ruins him with praise and BDSM, and then helps to put him back together a bit, but also with a lighthouse and really moody sea weather.' That's it, that's the fic.

_Murtagh_

*

Cateline described Grimglass as the ‘ass end of Corambis,’ and certainly while the heavy clouds hung over the sea like a pall, I could see what she meant. But the town – such as it was – grew quaintly under Kay’s administration, for all that he complained that he was unsuited to it. Still, the road out to the Grimglass lighthouse was as much pothole as it was surface, the wind howling alongside the mare I’d chosen from Vanessa’s stable. At least the horse wasn’t much given to spooking.

The weather didn’t dampen my spirits, I knew what jewel lived in the lighthouse, and hard winds did nothing more than raise an ache in my shoulder that I’d grown used to years ago.

Two years had passed since I’d last seen Virtuer Harrowgate – as Felix was now known to just about everyone, it seemed.

I’d never gone out of my way to visit the lighthouse. Sometimes Felix and Mildmay would be in Kay and Vanessa’s house, waiting. Mildmay familiar with every corner of it, and Felix sitting politely and not-quite-watching me in that way that alert, tuned shadows always do. There, I’d enjoy talking about everything other than the services Felix had once rendered to me, and honestly, there was a delightful tension in stirring Kay’s ire, prodding at Mildmay – who hadn’t warmed to me, after all this time – and getting Felix’s mismatched gaze to dart to mine in what I’m sure he thought was well-hidden awareness.

Then I packed up – glad enough that Kay and Vanessa were handling things well, they were a formidable team after all – and took that tension home with me in my gut and my chest, and told myself that a memory was enough. A nervous, damaged shadow was just that, and we’d had one good night together, and I needed no other.

Holy Lady, if only that were true.

Isobel wanted me to blame her for this entire trip. Months ago she’d taken up with Dunne in secret, and I’d wanted the relief of anger or jealousy, but all I felt was a tired understanding. Dunne was pragmatic, steady, and didn’t disappear on Duchy business every few days or weeks. And Dunne loved her, in that generous, true way that meant he wouldn’t even try to sabotage the relationship Isobel and I had with each other.

‘I’ll stop if you want me to,’ Isobel had said, but there was a determined look in her eyes that dared me to tell her no. In the world I knew, she was not shadow nor flame, and though it was always pleasing to bed her, we both understood that ours was a binding of practicality. I’d even reconciled myself to it.

‘I don’t want other people knowing.’

‘Neither do I,’ she said, staring at me like I’d taken leave of my senses. ‘You’re more likely to tell people than I am.’

Which of course led to an argument of which of us was the worse gossip – her, obviously, though I’m not sure she believed me by the end of it – and that was that.

When she’d turned to leave my office, she’d placed her hand on the door and only said:

‘I wouldn’t begrudge you the same, you know.’

She’d left before I could reply.

I was damned by the fact that I thought of Felix – wouldn’t stop thinking about him – before the day was even done.

So, months later, I stood holding a box of goods from Julian, tugging the heavy bellpull that caused a chime to sound deep within the building. I’d tied the mare to a lean-to intended for horses, suspecting there was a stable behind the great building. She seemed happy enough eating grass, ignoring the sharp weather, her shaggy coat clearly accustomed to it.

Here, the winds were too chill, and the lighthouse made of its grey granite was a bulwark against the sea. Grass grew in thick clumps around the base of the building. I wondered if the place was haunted. I was sure Felix would know, but it wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to talk to him about.

The large double wooden doors opened, and I expected the Grimglass caretaker, Walsh, to be there stooped and waiting. Instead I looked up to meet a pair of mismatched eyes, noted with pleasure the way they widened, narrowed, and then took up a kind of careful evenness. I smiled, and Felix’s fingers clenched on one of the doors.

Ah, well, he didn’t have to know the game had already begun, it wasn’t like he was obligated to play.

‘Virtuer Harrowgate,’ I said, a gleam of brightness flaring in me at the way he winced at the title, ‘I have a proposition for you.’

‘Ah,’ he said, that breathless, light voice hiding – no doubt – a scrambling of thoughts. Perhaps he would have said more, but the rain began to hammer down with a fury, and I stepped towards him to get out of it, and he stepped quickly backwards, and then swung his arm like he’d meant to invite me in all along. ‘Your Grace, you’re very welcome, of course. Mildmay’s with Kay, that’s… Do you require his assistance as well? I can send Walsh-’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ I said, walking into the lighthouse that I vaguely remembered from my childhood. It had been cleaned up significantly, the lower level with its lounge, kitchen and foyer homely and covered in ill-matching rugs. As soon as the double doors banged shut behind us, the sound of the sea was gone, replaced by that dull hum that was its constant movement against the ground. ‘Though you may want to summon Walsh to see to my mare.’

‘Of course, Your Grace.’

The sound of a second bell pull within the lighthouse, and Felix talking quietly to Walsh nearby. Walsh’s voice had been reedy even before it had aged; I could pick his voice anywhere.

I hung up my heavy travelling coat, but left the boots. The lighthouse felt too cold at ground level to go without.

‘So, what brings you to the Grimglass lighthouse, Your Grace?’ Felix said, returning, his voice all airy and confident now. His hair had grown back to the length it had the first time I’d met him. I liked it. I wanted to wind it around my palm and use it as a leash. ‘Unless you find yourself as fascinated by the logs of dead Virtuers as I do, I regret we don’t…’

I placed the box on the kitchen table, meaningfully meeting Felix’s eyes, liking the way his voice died at whatever he saw on my face. By the Holy Lady, there was _power_ in silencing someone like Felix. I’d seen how cutting he could be with his words now, learned how easily he wielded them to direct others. No wonder he’d thought himself a flame for a time.

The Copse got a few like him every now and then, and Keane would always find a way to winkle them out, though it might take him months or years.

‘Really?’ Felix drawled, finding a new track to run down, grasping at confidence. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t send Wyatt ahead of you to see if I was available.’

‘Believe it or not, I thought we might talk first.’

‘About what?’ Felix said. ‘How _riveting_ politics are here in Grimglass? Mildmay and Kay can both regale you, I’m sure you love hearing about their petty squabbles with Darne.’

‘No. Not politics,’ I said, sitting down at the table.

Felix stayed standing. He was taller. He had his ridiculous rings on, carried enough magic to terrify just about everyone in Corambis – and every other land he’d been exiled from – and seemed to forget he held any power at all when he looked at me. He didn’t even hold the confidence of a well-trained shadow. Oh, he’d been trained, but with curious methods, from masters I knew nearly nothing about.

He could pretend at confidence well enough when he wanted to. But as I sat there, letting the silence linger and watching his increasing agitation in the empty space that followed, I didn’t want the pretence. Not for long anyway.

‘It’s been years, Your Grace,’ Felix said finally. ‘Of course it’s a pleasure to see you, but this is unexpected. Did something change?’

‘Yes. I would have come to you sooner, otherwise.’

‘I’m sure,’ he said, a faint bitterness in his voice that I’m not even sure he knew was there. I didn’t take it personally. Best as I could understand it, he’d gone from high-powered socialite – with a difficult background that certainly wasn’t high-powered at all – to fallen disgrace, only to be welcomed into Corambis with open arms for all of five seconds, before the breadth of his magic scared most stiff and the rest of the Virtuers hurried to give him a safe place to spend the rest of his days while being very diplomatic about not calling it exile.

But Grimglass was lonely, the lighthouse the loneliest place of all. Even when I was a child, full of vigour and ready to take on any demon, the lighthouse seemed both haunted and sad.

‘I’m here now,’ I said.

‘Well, yes, but it does seem that you’re here for rather more than conversation, and Mildmay won’t be home until tomorrow, so you need not act as though you wish to talk with me. We can go upstairs now, if you like. Walsh won’t bother us. He avoids me as it is. In a…kind sort of way. He’s much more Mildmay’s kind of man.’

I wondered if he knew what he revealed.

It was tempting to make him sit with me, talk with me, but perhaps it would be better after the tension had been released. After all, this was not Felix seeking a well-paying job, performing no matter how onerous the client, this was me propositioning some sort of relationship, and I still wasn’t sure he’d ever voluntarily been a shadow in his life.

Which was why, really, I wanted to _talk_ to him first.

‘Then I suppose you’d best lead me upstairs,’ I said. ‘Are you not even going to ask me what’s in the box?’

Felix hesitated, and oh yes, it _was_ lovely putting him on the back foot. Not too far, I’d have to reel him back in with praise soon enough. So far Felix was wary, but not hostile. I didn’t doubt he could turn that way when he wasn’t desperate for money and hoping a client would pay him a good fee.

 _Yes, Felix, how_ did _you end up so comfortable working as a streetside shadow when you are clearly so much more than that?_

I’d only been able to push for so much, last time. I’m sure he would have answered anything I’d asked of him if I’d used the right tone, but it would have ruined the night.

‘What’s in the box, Your Grace?’

‘Coffee, from Ygres Sur. I’ve seen that you’re partial to it? There’s enough to last a while, I should think. Books, too. Along with some bits and pieces that Julian usually sends with Amice? Julian told me to pass on that Amice will still be by on Venerdy morning, as usual. He’s a lot more forward now that he’s Kay’s secretary, I must say.’

‘Books?’ Felix said, some of those barriers falling away. His eyes widened in interest, not shock, and he took a step towards the box before stopping. No doubt remembering that I’d asked him to lead us both upstairs.

‘Do you want to see?’

‘Your Grace, you didn’t have to-’ A wry smile, teasing and lovely all at once. ‘Are you trying to _bribe_ me, by any chance?’

‘Sweet talk, maybe,’ I said. ‘I’m out of the habit of propositioning.’

A bit more of an equal footing now, and Felix looked far more comfortable. I’d let him enjoy that for a little while, and it was pleasing to see him more in his element.

‘I am out of the habit of being propositioned,’ Felix said, and looked surprised after having said it. ‘I’ve had…other priorities while I’ve been here.’

His gaze turned distant, and it gave me a chance to study him. He always angled his yellow eye to the side furthest from whoever he was speaking to. A defensive gesture, the same way I tried to keep my injured arm behind me so I could protect myself more easily with the one that hadn’t been scarred. His deep red hair had that streak of brilliant white, making him eldritch in appearance. He was as thin and willowy as before, his long, clever fingers doing a far better job at protecting himself than his whole body could.

I remembered that mess of scars upon his back and wanted to see them again.

I thought, helplessly, of Edwin Beckett and the revelations that had come far too late and plagued me for far too long. And yet Felix had shrugged off the experience and taken great pains to reassure me, in that way that suggested he was no stranger to that sort of treatment, like pack rape was something one simply _did_ shrug off.

Yes, I was certain he had no idea how much he revealed, at times.

‘You’re staring, Your Grace,’ Felix said, eyes sliding to mine.

‘I am.’

He flushed, but also smiled a little, pleased. Vain like a wildcat, with just as many claws.

‘You don’t want a tour of the lighthouse, Your Grace?’ Felix said, that faint teasing still in his voice.

‘I’ve been here before. As a child, so a very long time ago now. Has it changed much?’

‘We have hot water plumbing and heating,’ Felix said, looking up towards the ceiling. ‘Mildmay was quite firm about it, and he seemed to like the challenge. There’s electricity, though it’s temperamental. There’s a pulley lift elevator, which Walsh and Mildmay worked on for months, adjustable weights and a great deal more that Mildmay’s tried to explain to me, but I don’t have much of a mind for engineering. Not that kind, anyway. I believe there’s rather more rugs than there would have been when you were a child.’

That last delivered in a dry deadpan, and I couldn’t help but smile.

‘You know we can just chat,’ I said.

Felix’s smile widened, like a false flash in a duck’s wing. ‘About what? I well remember what you like.’

 _Are you so unused to it?_ I thought. _So unused to negotiation? Talking to someone who wants you?_

Of course I didn’t expect it from shadows that Wyatt hired for me, but from a peer…

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Shall we? You might want to fetch some oil.’

His cheeks coloured brilliantly and I almost laughed. And then Felix’s ears coloured and his hands twitched.

‘Actually, I have oil upstairs,’ Felix said, then laughed ruefully.

‘Should I ask why?’

I could very well imagine why.

‘Oh, _please.’_ Felix pinned me with a look, ducked his head and then shook it, before heading off with decisive strides. I followed, suppressing a grin.

*

The elevator system was sophisticated, bypassing the uneven stone stairs that I remembered being hard on my small feet as a child. They must have been murder for Mildmay until they’d developed the system.

We passed the second level, and slowed to a stop at the third. The fourth level housed the light that shone out over the cliffs. Up here, it was possible to feel the building vibrate dully from the force of the wind, no matter how strong its stones were. I was surprised at the warmth, more than could be generated by a mere fireplace.

Felix’s room had once been wholly circular, but was now partitioned off. A wooden wall and door no doubt hid a bathroom. There were plenty of rugs upon the floor, and tapestries hanging on the wall to muffle the worst of the cold. The rugs were alternatively threadbare or plush, some had clearly been passed on by others, and others had been purchased new, or gifted? A fire crackled happily in an old hearth, the grate had three chains of metal each suspending a different crystal.

‘Excuse me, Your Grace. Do you mind if I shower?’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘And I think we can dispense with ‘Your Grace’ for now, don’t you? You remember how I like to be addressed at times like this.’

Felix’s shoulders straightened, his spine stiffened, and then he nodded once. ‘Of course, Sir.’

He quickly seized some clothing from one of the large wooden closets, and then disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. A moment later, the sound of pipes juddering and then the spray of water.

The bookshelves had far too few books in them. I’d expected hundreds more, especially since the bookshelves themselves were large and clearly designed to hold a small library’s worth. I’d expected the tomes on magic, but the ones on the natural sciences surprised me. I flicked through one on the insects of Corambis, and the book fell upon to a bookmark made of fraying ribbon, marking the well-known drowner’s moth. I shuddered to see it.

I’d seen far too many of them at Desperen Field, and carefully placed the book back in its proper place.

Other books revealed more of those ribbon bookmarks, and at first I thought Felix never finished a book, and then realised he was marking the places of things he either particularly enjoyed, or found fascinating or useful.

At a large worktable, aged parchment with almost incomprehensible rambling upon it was stacked, and next to it, what must have been Felix’s writing, which wasn’t _much_ better. At least fifteen candles, in varying stages of being completely burnt down huddled together at one corner of the table.

Weighed down by a clumsy bronze of a draft horse, was a half-written letter. I looked towards the bathroom, then read:

_Dear Virtuer Ashmead,_

_I eagerly received your correspondence regarding the new theories of noirance and mikkary. It’s refreshing to see how younger minds are turning to the subject, and some fascinating points have been made. However if you’ll see my attached notes, I’ve taken the time to correct some of the fallacies and provide further sources._

The letter went on, and I looked away when I realised it was becoming personal.

I tried to think of the last time I’d actually had an ongoing relationship with any kind of shadow. Since marrying Isobel, it had all been left to one-off visits organised by Wyatt, and only when discreetly possible, which wasn’t often. So it would have been since Cateline, and I was used to thinking of her as a friend these days, it had been so long since I’d known her the way a flame knows a shadow best.

The idea that Felix might acquiesce to something intermittent, potentially long-term, where I might be able to introduce him to more than I ever could in a single visit…

I was greedy, getting ahead of myself, and eventually I sighed and sat down at Felix’s worktable and waited, schooling my impatience, and enjoying the warmth.


	2. Bared

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapters! What a novelty! (Short for me). 
> 
> New tags: Blowjobs, Inspection
> 
> As always on this account ([I have another](https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_poignant/pseuds/not_poignant)), I’m responding to comments just before I put up a chapter, because it makes me very eager to complete the next chapter.
> 
> Because I’m breaking the chapters up into smaller pieces, this will…*coughs nervously* perhaps be longer than 9 chapters? I don’t…know?

_Murtagh_

*

Felix emerged from the shower after another fifteen minutes, wearing a soft, long-sleeved shirt in a deep blue that only made the striking shade of his damp hair and eyes more noticeable. He wore the same pants as before. In his hand he held an enamel tin that looked like it might contain pills or something similar, staring at it, and then looking at me.

He levered the lid off – though it had rusted over time – and showed me the pills inside.

‘Hecate,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know… I should have asked if you wanted me to take them, Sir.’

This time, the ‘Sir’ didn’t come as easily. I let it go for now.

‘Why do you have them at all?’ I would have thought he wasn’t in the habit of using tablets to suppress his magic at all anymore. Doing it to put strange clients at ease was one thing, but as Virtuer Felix Harrowgate of the Grimglass lighthouse? It struck me as odd.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘There was one tarquin- ah, flame, Sir, and he insisted. I couldn’t blame him, not with my reputation, and I kept the tin, in case there were…others.’

‘Does this flame have a name?’ I said, trying to think of anyone I knew who lived in Grimglass who might be oriented that way, or anyone who visited Grimglass.

‘He preferred to remain anonymous, Sir,’ Felix said, and his thumb slipped into the tin of tablets and pushed them around.

‘Likely, the hecate is no longer fresh, and I don’t much care either way. I have to ask, how was the encounter?’

Felix smiled stiffly, placing the lid back on the tin. ‘Short. He saw the scars on my back and made some excuse and left soon after.’

‘Yes,’ I murmured. That wasn’t something that many flames would be used to at all. ‘Undress. Show them to me.’

Felix gave me an assessing look, then placed the tin down on a large dresser. I leaned back against the chair as he unbuttoned the shirt that he’d just put on, his hands moving from the bottom upwards, wrists sinuous and just as slow as the first time.

When he was naked – half-hard too, I wondered if he’d touched himself at all in the shower – he stood, arms by his sides, turned towards me. I doubted he’d forgotten what I wanted, and while I appreciated that his small rebellions were often caused by fear or doubt, I had very little patience indulging them.

‘No,’ I said softly, ‘that’s not what I asked for, is it?’

A quick spasm of his right hand, and he turned, showing me his back and the scars upon them instead.

I shucked my boots and socks and then stood, approaching Felix where he stood on the rug. He didn’t like having his back to me, and it was so tempting to reach out and place a steadying hand on his flank, but I didn’t. He wasn’t shaking as badly as he had last time, so even if he was uncomfortable, nervous, even afraid, there was still progress there. The scarring hadn’t gotten any better since I’d last seen it, and I frowned, studying them.

‘If I recall, you never told me what caused these,’ I said. ‘But more than one event, surely. There are scars upon scars here.’ I breathed over the section that looked all too ropey, easy to think it was a stroke that had cut too deep to the bone, but I recognised that work. ‘And this, to fix adhesions?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ Felix said, answering the direct question and nothing else. No, he wasn’t very comfortable at all.

‘Do you use anything to treat them?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘No oils, or anything to break up the scar tissue further? Or are you so very attached to them?’

He wasn’t. I remembered well how he reacted to even the hint of my fingers approaching them. I’d still touched them, because scars didn’t scare me, and I was fascinated by the way the nerves beneath changed their responses. Even my own arm with its brutal scarring had fascinated me, which had probably helped with the horrendous period of time afterwards, that the physician had mistakenly called a ‘healing process.’

‘There’s oils to treat scarring like this?’ Felix said, surprise in his voice. Last time, he’d implied that he’d gained the scars from professional work, but I didn’t know of any flame that would let someone go with injuries like these, without unguents or ointment. I made a face, that wasn’t _entirely_ true. There were some who called themselves flames who cared not at all for their clients and delighted in destroying them. But they hadn’t earned the right to call themselves flames, and their shadows were…broken.

‘Nothing will make them go, of course,’ I said. ‘But the skin is frail and thin, and the oils can help condition them and soothe the nerves beneath.’

‘Even after all this time?’

‘You’re full of questions today, aren’t you?’

He flinched, then quickly: ‘I apologise for speaking out of turn, Sir.’

It hadn’t been a reprimand, but I didn’t bother correcting him. I straightened, my eyes roaming down the lower part of his back – also scarred, which was egregious given all the internal organs that rested there – over his buttocks, and then down further.

‘That long scar at your calf is new. How did you get it?’

‘Oh, yes, that. A mishap when Mildmay was working on the elevators. I was distracted, and there was an awful lot of sharp metal lying about.’

‘It’s nasty.’

‘It took a surprising amount of time to heal,’ Felix admitted, his voice muted. ‘We didn’t have the hot water system working at that point, and it was winter. It was…quite a welcome to Grimglass.’

I wanted to run my hand over it, gentling whatever mood entered Felix’s voice at that admittance. But there would be plenty of time for that.

I walked around to his front, looking down at his cock surrounded by its distinct bed of deep red pubic hair, making a point to smile when I saw that he was still half-hard. His chest was bare, a novelty given how furred I was by comparison, and I noticed a few other scars here and there. What looked like two from puncture wounds were an angry red just above his hip, and I frowned.

‘What caused those?’

Felix looked down, his cheeks flushed, his hair beginning to dry into waves. ‘An attack, Sir.’

He didn’t seem inclined to share the rest of the story. He was recalcitrant. I had seen him talk like it was as easy as drawing air, as long as the subject was on anything concerning politics or magic, and nothing to do with himself.

‘Explain.’

‘I don’t remember all of it clearly. I’d been drugged. Mildmay had gone on to Kay’s without me, and I was in the city. I’m not…well-liked by a small handful of townspeople. Many are very friendly, really, but there was one who had a grievance. I woke with the wounds. I’m not sure how they were made.’

They looked like punctures made from metal, the kind of machinery that might be used to bolt rivets into a wall.

‘And the person who attacked you?’

A quick flash of a smile. ‘Mildmay,’ Felix said, ‘and some of Vanessa’s men. They dealt with it. In the end, Darne was the one that had incited it all, but we couldn’t prove it.’

‘Bloody Darne,’ I muttered to myself. If there was a way to quietly do away with him, I’m sure Kay would have found it by now.

‘A common sentiment, Sir,’ Felix said.

I stepped back and looked at him all over again, and smiled. ‘You’re as beautiful as ever, Felix.’

Felix’s fingers shifted like he didn’t know what to do with that information. But it was true, and I’d seen what praise could do to him, and it felt lovely to use it like someone else might use a quirt.

‘Undress me, and then kneel.’

Felix nodded, almost to himself as much as to me, and then stepped up to me. I liked that he was taller, liked the feeling of strength he held when I got my hands around him. I liked that in the beginning his yielding would be hesitant, I’d feel resistance initially in those muscles, and then as the night progressed, less and less resistance until finally his surrender was complete.

Felix’s hands over my clothing, carefully removing each item, made me harder in my pants. I watched his fingers and wrists, his tattoos that had been the talk of the town for some time, enough that for a few months after Felix’s exile to Grimglass, hand, finger and palm tattoos were seen in increasing abundance.

I wished we’d taken an hour or more just to talk before all of this. I had to push the resentment aside, because I didn’t think it was him I was truly angry at. Someone had made him believe that his worth was tied not to conversation, but to this. And if I wasn’t careful, I’d take that resentment out on him and get one step further away from knowing anything about him.

And I couldn’t retrain him if I didn’t have more information.

It was the first time I’d really been honest with myself about what I wanted from him. And as his fingers slipped elegantly between the seam of my pants and my skin, to push them down over my cock carefully, I wondered if he’d ever allow it. Retraining was work, and it was challenging. I’d never taken it on myself, only watched Keane and Gisela at times with others at The Copse, or talked about the theory of it.

Apparently I didn’t have enough challenge in my life, if I wanted to take on something like this. I could have kicked myself.

All too soon, Felix knelt before me. Like last time, I noticed that he presented himself very well, but in a way that was hard on his joints, like someone wanted him to constantly be uncomfortable in his own skin.

‘That’s very nice,’ I said. ‘I’m going to make a couple of adjustments. Hold still.’

Felix’s head swung around nervously as I crouched beside him, and I reached up and pressed a finger to his jaw, turning his head to face the front.

‘I said hold still.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ Felix said.

I placed my hands on his ankles, shifting them. He knelt like he _wanted_ the arches of his feet to cramp. And I eased the strain on the muscles and ligaments, running my hand along his scarred calf as I did so. Goosebumps followed where my hand had been. I heard a tiny sip of breath.

‘You’re very elegantly made,’ I said, watching his back rise and fall on a short breath. ‘Last time, I knew you were special. But since then, I’ve learned so much more about you, and it seems almost impossible that you contain so much strength yet can kneel so beautifully.’

A sharp inhale, and I could practically feel the way Felix ached to dispel what I’d said. At the last moment he managed to stay whatever cutting words were on his tongue. I knew he could be very obedient when he wanted to be, but I suspected if he wasn’t being forced with pain and duress, he leaned towards talking back, fighting, turning everything into a challenge.

I placed a hand on the back of his ankle. ‘Is that easier on your joints?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ Felix said after a pause. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

I made sure my surveillance of him was idle as I stood, but in truth I was watching him for that flash of terror he’d shown the first time. I remembered it all too well; his rebellion, the choice I had to start us off by allowing his infraction or showing him that I was a flame, but not the flame he seemed to expect. But in that moment there had been fear curdling within me too. Was it the right decision? Would he yield? Would it end? I am not the kind of flame to drive shadows away permanently because of pushing too hard, but others – even the sensitive, kinder ones – had done it in the past, just from misreading the situation, not trusting their shadow.

There was a saying in The Copse: Every horse will throw its rider at least once. But that was nonsense. I was not someone that was thrown by literal horses. I was not someone who handled my shadows clumsily enough that they baulked entirely.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? He wasn’t mine. We hadn’t even talked about what that might look like.

This time, Felix’s fear was still there, but muted. I slid one of my hands boldly through his damp, lustrous hair, over the back of his scalp and he looked up at me with a trust I would like to tell myself I had earned. But I hadn’t. Not yet. I couldn’t even coax him to talk to me before we began this, friend to friend, peer to peer.

When I slid my other hand into his hair, he leaned forwards instinctively to mouth my cock, and my fingers tightened. I held him still.

I couldn’t yet tell if that was true eagerness, or a subtle taking back of control. Felix stiffened beneath me, like he’d been caught committing a horrible crime.

‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘Though your eagerness is very appreciated.’

Felix kept his eyes down. I wasn’t yet at the stage where I wanted him to predict every part of this, though I did intend for it to be very similar to last time. No shocks for Felix, and indulgence for myself, just to see if that chemistry still existed, if my mind hadn’t turned one night into something rather more than it was.

‘Straighten your spine,’ I said.

It changed Felix’s position significantly. He needed to hunch a little to get his mouth on my cock. I drew him forwards, and I could feel the way he tensed, no idea what I was doing.

_It’s okay, darling. We’ll get you to what’s familiar, soon enough._

I pressed the side of his face against my belly, feeling the chilled sections of his face – his ear, the tip of his nose, that prominent cheekbone.

‘There we go,’ I said. ‘That’s very nice.’

I couldn’t see Felix’s face, but I had to imagine that his eyes were open in confusion. If only I’d been wrong about him. I’d started to convince myself that he wasn’t so unfamiliar with sensuality for its own sake. Even people who aren’t used to it will fall towards it once they get some. But Felix treated it like a trap, and I damned any flame that had him before me that hadn’t done more to work on this. Or worse, had wanted this reaction.

I stroked his hair, from the top of his hairline at his forehead, down below his ears. Lazy strokes, over and over again.

‘Two years has felt like a surprisingly long time,’ I dared saying.

‘Yes, Sir,’ Felix said, his voice stiff. I felt pleasure a minute later, as Felix’s head rested a little harder against my skin, relaxing just enough that I knew he was trying. ‘I must admit, I’ve thought about that night too.’

‘Oh? Have you?’ I said, a teasing warmth in my voice. Felix tensed, then relaxed again, a small sigh making his shoulders fall. Then he turned within my stroking hands, brushing his lips against tender skin like he had that first time, when his lips found the scar on my arm, naturally and easily, as though he’d never had a single judgemental thought in his entire life.

Holy Lady, I wanted to ruin him.

I guided him back into his previous position with my hands, and this time he went easily with the motion. Drawing his mouth to my cock was wonderful, he didn’t fight to move forward or back, but – at least for that moment – gave complete control up to me.

Knowing he was more than capable, I had him swallow me to the root at once, pressing my lips together on a hiss. His mouth was sinfully good, not a hint of teeth, a working tongue, strong suction. And even with all of that, the weight of additional attention, trying to work out what I liked _more._ He worked as hard as he could within the bounds of what he was allowed, all to please me.

‘Your _mouth,_ Felix,’ I groaned.

A harsh exhale through his nose was all Felix could manage, but I felt that stirring my pubic hairs and tightened my grip.

‘Ah, perfect.’ I withdrew and felt a wicked twist of his tongue curling around the head of my cock, shocking me with how good it felt. Felix repeated the movement from then on as much as possible. I opened my eyes and stared down at him hungrily.

I held his head in place, my cock resting fat on his tongue, not all the way back to the tight suction in his throat. I needed to keep him still for this. I raised my leg to drag my foot up his thigh, feeling his hard cock – long and slender and cut – hot like a brand against me.

‘Even better,’ I purred.

Felix made a cut off sound of want, then tilted his head up, staring at me. His cheeks and ears were flushed, his eyes brighter, the yellow and blue almost gaudy. My fingers tightened, and I slid slowly deeper into his mouth, and Felix blinked rapidly up at me and then closed his eyes like he couldn’t help himself.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Keep them open.’

Felix opened them immediately, staring up.

‘Don’t move,’ I said.

I withdrew one of my hands from the back of his head, felt the way his muscles shifted minutely to stay perfectly in place, to not lose a millimetre of my cock. I traced his mouth, the spit that had gathered at the corners, his lower lip, and then I slid two fingers in alongside my cock, touching myself, touching the inside of his mouth.

His eyes began to drift shut, and I watched him fight to keep them open.

‘That’s it,’ I said, pressing down on his tongue, holding his head tightly with my other hand. He wasn’t allowed to close his eyes, but I closed mine as I alternated between fucking my fingers over his tongue, and stroking along my own cock in that tight, wet heat. After a minute, he sucked tentatively, his tongue pressing up, and a gleam of mild smugness curled through me.

‘Felix,’ I said warningly, and he stopped _so_ quickly. ‘I told you not to move.’

I opened my eyes and looked down, and Felix had no difficulties keeping his eyes open now. Even I could see the fear.

‘Ah, we’ll deal with it later. I wouldn’t trouble yourself with it now.’

It was reassuring and worrying, I could tell, but it took the sudden edge of fear out of his gaze, and he blinked up at me waiting to see what I’d do or say next.

Once, I would have found this hard to fathom. That someone with such a brilliant intellect, who scathingly commanded not just a room, but entire swathes of people, could yield so beautifully as well. But the signs were there for anyone to see. How he leaned into praise, or uncomfortably twinged away from it, how – with the right people – he looked towards them sometimes to see if they approved of whatever he was doing. Often, he looked towards Mildmay, and just as often, Mildmay never noticed.

I pushed the thoughts out of my head. If all went well, we could have our conversation later. _Later._

I ran my toes carefully over his cock and he shivered, mouth twitching in a way that was involuntary. After a couple of minutes of teasing, Felix’s breathing stirred to unevenness, I withdrew my foot, planted my feet once again and took my fingers from his mouth and slid them back into his hair.

‘You can move again now,’ I said as I withdrew and thrust back into his mouth. ‘Within reason. Just like before.’

I gave myself carefully over to my own pleasure, listening to the cadence of Felix’s uneven breathing struggling to keep up with my movements. I was never cruel, but I was demanding, need flashing through me when I realised just how long I’d been depriving myself for.

I had a good two decades on Felix, and coming took longer than it used to. But the mouth and tongue and lips around me never faltered, and several times, Felix’s head strained in my hands not like he was trying to escape, but like he was trying to feel the grip I had, or even nuzzle into it. He didn’t move his hands from his knees where they rested, and though his hips bucked a few times, he didn’t demand a thing.

It was more of that clever twisting of Felix’s tongue at the end of my cock that had me growling as I came, the head on his tongue so he could catch all of it. And he did, and when I opened my eyes, his eyes were blinking quickly up at mine.

All because I hadn’t told him he could close them.

‘Good,’ I groaned. ‘ _So_ good, aren’t you? That mouth, as good for this as it is for everything else you do. What a treat you are.’

I grinned wickedly at the way he squeezed his eyes shut, because oh yes, I _had_ missed this.

I’d schooled my features when his eyes opened again, and then slid free of his mouth. I didn’t let go of him, though I eased my grip and tilted his head up.

‘Open your mouth,’ I commanded.

He opened it wide. Enough that it might have put strain on the corners of his lips. Freeing one of my hands from his hair, I poked fingers into his mouth, making a show of looking. Of course he’d swallowed everything, but I’d always liked inspections, and Felix responded well to them.

I thumbed a tiny smear of come away from the corner of his mouth and then painted it onto his tongue, and he licked my thumb clean like a kitten. Rough enough that I knew he must be thirsty. Felix would never ask for water, nor would he trust that I would give it to him. He assumed he was supposed to go without. This I knew all too well from last time.

‘All right. Up.’

He was rising smoothly even as I helped him, and then I dragged his lips down to mine, tasting the heat of his mouth with my tongue, drinking in the faint moan he gave. He leaned in hard enough that I braced him with a hand on his flank until he was steadier.

When I pulled back, he leaned in again, before seeming to catch himself.

‘Do you have a glass or mug anywhere up here?’ I asked.

Felix’s forehead furrowed, then he nodded.

‘Good, go get some water. I think we could both use some after that.’

With my broad hand on Felix’s flank, I felt the way he tensed, like he needed to be suspicious.

‘Go on,’ I said.

Felix took a step backwards, his hair wild and mussed already, and then seemed to come to his senses and he walked towards the bathroom.

When he was in there, I called: ‘Oh, by the way, where’s your oil?’

‘Ah,’ Felix called, his voice a little higher, a little rougher than usual. ‘Third drawer down, the little dresser by my bed.’

I walked over and opened it, just as Felix reappeared in the bathroom door, holding the mug and staring at me just as I no doubt stared at the contents of the drawer.

‘Where on earth did you find _these_ in Grimglass?’ I said, pulling out the plug, the dildo. Both were made finely, hard-grained wooden models that were well-oiled, totally smooth, and wouldn’t have been out of place decoratively adorning mantles in The Copse.

‘In a manner of speaking, Julian,’ Felix said. Though he was a little embarrassed, he mostly looked sheepish, and still completely erect.

 _‘Julian.’_ I stared at him. What was my nephew up to now?

‘In a roundabout sort of way, yes, ah-’

‘Oh, please, explain this to me. I’m all ears.’

‘I can _see that.’_

‘Drink some water first,’ I ordered, and Felix did automatically. Three very polite sips.

Whoever had trained him had an exacting eye, precise and ruthless. But they’d worked with fear and pain, so while Felix’s submission was graceful, it wasn’t comfortable. I wanted to augment it with what I knew a shadow could be.

‘Now tell me.’

‘If you must know, Julian has felt quite _free_ to explore certain matters here in Grimglass, and occasionally comes to confide in me about it. I wish I knew why, I have _never_ cast myself as any kind of confidante, I promise you. But he mentioned a local carpenter who made intriguing paraphernalia, who held no judgement towards him being molly, er, violet- No, that’s Caloxan, I believe the correct term is bluet?’

‘I see,’ I said, unable to stop myself from smiling, Felix looked so exasperated talking about the differences in language.

‘Well, I decided to send Amice over in my stead and have a look at the carpenter’s catalogue, so to speak.’

‘Amice?’

‘Oh, you know him,’ Felix said dismissively, waving his hand, ‘he’s the one in love with Julian, even though Julian’s too dense to figure it out. You know him, he’s one of Vanessa’s. Tan clear skin to die for, and those black, soulful eyes, and limber from hauling groceries and boxes around all day. Why he moons over Julian, I’ll never understand, but he does, while Julian goes gallivanting about the village to the entire three people who will have him.’

 _‘I see,’_ I said, beginning to think I needed to have a stern word with Kay for allowing this. And a stern word with Julian in general. Julian might be in Grimglass, but there was still the Carey reputation to uphold.

‘Shall I keep talking? Or do you want to go and march back to the Pallister-Brightmore household to have words?’

Felix smiled sharply, and I returned the gesture. ‘Sir,’ I reminded him.

He ducked his head. ‘Ah, Sir. My apologies, Sir.’

‘Finish your story, Felix. It’s been very enlightening. What _did_ Amice find in this carpenter’s catalogue?’

Amusing too, since Felix now looked wholly impatient at himself for starting on this track in the first place, while I sat happily on his bed with a wooden plug, dildo and a jar of oil right next to me.

‘As you can see, Sir,’ Felix said crisply, ‘the carpenter _does_ have a rather interesting hobby and I am _not_ able to go off gallivanting about the village, not least because chances are high that everyone I might fuck, Julian has already fucked. It’s a tiny place, you know.’

‘Hadn’t noticed. Not once.’

‘Ah, yes. I daresay the village has even grown by the most modest of increments since you visited as a child, Sir.’

‘So,’ I said, liking the bite in his voice, but not indulging it. ‘You trust Amice enough to fetch you these?’ I said, trailing my index finger down the dildo. Felix watched my finger and swallowed noticeably.

‘He’s a very dependable fellow. He’s down every week with items and groceries from the village.’

‘And you don’t moon after his tan skin and muscles and soulful eyes?’

‘I’m not really one for mooning, Sir,’ Felix said with a sweet, hostile smile that wasn’t remotely playful, and a reminder that I was straying too far from my objectives. Did I want to have a conversation now? Or finish out what we’d started? It wasn’t fair to let Felix have his head and repeatedly drag him back to the right state of mind, and I was angry at myself. Felix’s cock had softened significantly.

‘Come here, Felix,’ I said gently, beckoning him over. ‘I want you to lie on your back, and spread your legs please. Pass me the glass of water as you go. Are you still thirsty?’

‘No, Sir,’ Felix said, as he walked. He missed a step when he realised I must have noticed he needed water in the first place. His gaze on mine was calculating and deeply unnerved. When he handed me the glass, I reached up and caught his wrist, keeping him in place.

I could feel it, that push-pull I’d started had pushed him too far, he was thinking too hard. But he stayed still and quiet – if not quiescent – and after a minute, his arm went limp where I held his wrist, and his fingers lost their tight curl, falling into something far more natural. He looked down at where I’d caught him.

‘Thank you for telling me,’ I said. ‘I did ask.’

Felix’s face tightened, but he didn’t look at me, and he didn’t say anything. I didn’t think it was shame about the toys, but that I’d managed to elicit more personal information than he’d wanted to share, and then teased him about Amice. He didn’t like to feel like a fool, and I planned on showing him that I didn’t think he was one. But that would take time.

‘Of course, Sir,’ Felix said, his voice softer. ‘Shall I- Do you still wish me to lie upon the bed?’

‘Yes.’ I let go of his wrist, and he turned it, almost in a way that had me wondering if he was feeling out an injury. But then he got onto the bed easily, lay on his back, and I almost sighed when I saw how widely he’d stretched his legs. Too much for his groin, his hips.

I stood, one knee on the bed, and carefully adjusted his legs, making sure the skin wasn’t so taut. Then, because apparently I wasn’t done prodding him, I said:

‘Whoever trained you really had no concern for your comfort, did they?’

‘Your comfort is mine, Sir,’ Felix said automatically.

‘Felix,’ I said, reproving.

Felix sucked in a tiny, chastened exhale, and I knew he found this harder than some physical punishments. He was doing everything that he thought was correct. I almost regretted pushing him, when he was already pushing himself to some invisible flame’s standards.

 _‘Why,’_ Felix said, with all the dry cattiness of someone truly annoyed and about to make me fully aware of it, ‘would you assume it was only _one_ person who trained me? As I said, your comfort is mine, Sir, and if you’re not comfortable with something I’m doing, you need only tell or show me. Your will is mine.’

I could hear the words that weren’t quite his. Statements taught to him with techniques that would make them stick, alongside his own discomfort that I would even challenge anything he’d learned in the past. I was breaking the script as he understood it. My comfort was supposed to be my cock in whatever orifice I wanted it in, my hands using whatever weapons to brutalise him. No doubt he would think me a lesser flame for caring about his comfort at all.

I was running on so many assumptions at this point, I wanted the slam my fist into the heavy stone wall. Not that such an act ever earned more than broken or near-broken knuckles at best.

‘I’m very comfortable, darling,’ I said, changing tack. ‘I’ve just had the most exquisite blowjob, from an incredibly beautiful man.’

Felix’s annoyance had vanished as soon as I started praising him, but the wariness was back.

I crawled onto the bed.

‘Now that my need is temporarily dealt with, I can explore what I want from you, can’t I?’ I swept a hand down the centre of his chest, pressing down, feeling the way the mattress gave as his body did.

I stared down at him, and he stared up at me, and when I looked between his legs, his cock was already beginning to harden again. Ah, well that was lovely.

‘You’ll just have to be patient with my Corambin ways,’ I said.

‘Of course,’ Felix said, then hesitated. ‘If there’s any way I can be a better mart- shadow for you, Sir, I’ll do it.’

 _Likely at cost to your own wellbeing, isn’t that right, Felix?_ Still, that wasn’t something parroted from some older flame, that was Felix wanting desperately to please, and worrying that he’d pushed me too far, said too much. There were times to leave a shadow in that uncertain space, but times to soothe as well.

‘You’re doing well. Given you were out of practice when I last saw you, and you’ve not had any more practice in two years since… Honestly, you are a _treasure.’_

Felix held his breath, I felt it beneath my hand, the little catch in his muscles.

‘Why aren’t more people calling you that?’ I asked rhetorically. ‘Don’t they realise what they have in their midst? How very fine you are? Fools, all of them.’

An owlish blink, and it was going to my head. If my cock wasn’t completely spent in the moment, it might have twitched. Instead, I straddled him and bent down, taking his lips and his mouth until he couldn’t afford to hold his breath anymore. Tasting myself in his mouth until the residual bitterness was gone and I could only taste Felix. He liked when my tongue slicked along his, in a way that was more intense than I’d encountered before. So I did it repeatedly until he moaned against me, arching up helplessly.

When I withdrew, his eyes were closed, a smudge of dark red where his eyelashes lay against his cheeks. He looked spent already, and it almost made me laugh. No, we were only just beginning, and we had the whole night ahead of us. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so eager.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to hit me up on Tumblr! I post excerpts there sometimes.


	3. Blind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New tags: Blindfold, edging, anal sex, fingering.
> 
> Every time Murtagh thinks he knows something about Felix, I laugh. I just laugh and think of all the trauma and reveals that are coming. Also this fic has no point. It barely has a plot.

_Murtagh_

*

Felix’s hair was drying to wild curls as I straddled him in the centre of his large bed, his head on the pillows and one blue eye and one yellow watching me hungrily. His lips were redder after kissing, there were two hectic points of colour on his cheeks. I looked at the toys and wasn’t sure I’d use either of them. I reached for the oil and then realised what it was I wanted.

‘Do you have any neck ties?’ I asked. ‘Anything I might use as a blindfold?’

Felix’s expression was almost exasperated, but he pointed to the tall wood dresser near the bookshelves.

‘Top shelf,’ he said. ‘I have some unused strips of cloth. Makeshift bandages.’

‘You don’t strike me as the clumsy sort.’ But as I opened the drawer and found four rolls of cloth, I turned back. ‘The calf injury?’

‘That’s the one,’ Felix said.

I unrolled the cloth. It would serve well as a blindfold, though it wasn’t fully opaque. It didn’t need to be.

I wrapped the blindfold twice around his head, careful when tying it so that I didn’t snag his hair. The cloth was dark green, a bit of gold on it. Some shirt or piece of clothing that Felix maybe hadn’t cared for, even though the colour suited him.

Felix’s response to the blindfold was deceptively lacking. His breathing was just as even, his face just as relaxed, but I felt something tense in the air. When I pressed my lips to his closed mouth, he hesitated before responding.

_Ah, doesn’t much like the blindfold._

I kissed him carefully, aiming to soothe rather than stir. It was easy for me, I’d already come once.

Eventually, Felix exhaled, relaxing into what was happening. His shoulders dropped a bit more towards the mattress. One of his gaudily tattooed hands lifted and brushed my side before returning to the bed. I suspected he’d been trained not to touch whoever was with him, unless they wanted it, or asked for it – he’d been shy with touch last time, until he was so uninhibited it didn’t matter anymore. I didn’t much mind, but I appreciated the feel of his hands against me. It would be nice to ask him to touch me however he liked one day, to let him explore.

I kissed my way down over his jaw, liking the hitched breath and aborted swallow when I licked over his throat. No stubble at all, but I’d heard rumours about Troians. Further down, I mouthed at one of his collarbones.

I sat back once I’d licked a path down to his sternum, pressing my palms flat to his pectorals, feeling each nipple hard against my hands. They were sensitive, and I dragged my fingertips over them. I took my time, wondering if I’d know when he’d yielded to the blindfold. I wanted him to know this evening wasn’t going to be over in ten minutes, or even an hour.

His breaths deepened, he pushed up into my touch, and when he arched high enough in a demand only minutes later, I pinched up both nipples at the same time, twisting them, and he yelped, jerking back towards the bed. I didn’t let go, watching him, craving the way he bit at his lower lip, and then the way – a few seconds later – his tense breaths turned to something more accepting.

‘Very good,’ I said, drawing the words out. Felix tensed all over, shivering.

Carefully, slowly, I let go and went back to that teasing touch of before, and he made a face of frustration that almost had me laughing.

Eventually even his frustration melted away. But he was reluctant to fully give himself over to pleasure. And as I began stroking my hands down over his ribs, towards his belly, he shifted restlessly.

That was nothing compared to his reaction when I took the head of his cock into my mouth. He jerked, pushed himself up like he could stare at me, and I saw from his eyebrows lifted above the blindfold how shocked he was.

I took my mouth off his cock. ‘Settle down, please.’

Felix’s arms went beneath him at once, like strings had been cut. His head faced up towards the ceiling, mouth open.

‘Sir,’ he said.

‘Does no one do this where you come from?’ I said, trailing my fingers up the underside of his cock.

It was pretty and long, with a slight curve. Someone had taken his foreskin at some point, and there were tiny jags in the discolouration which suggested a messy or unprofessional job. But the shaft was a lovely dark pink-brown, and that red pubic hair at the base made him shudder whenever I dragged my fingers through it.

‘Well?’ I prompted.

‘It’s not exactly common for tarquins to- Ah, flames don’t exactly-’

‘You had it right the first time,’ I said, wrapping my fingers around the base of his cock. The skin was tender and soft, and when I squeezed, Felix’s back shifted like he wanted to curl towards the touch. ‘Tarquins might not have engaged in all the sensual means available to them – their loss, honestly. But you don’t know what flames do, and you shouldn’t compare the two.’

I was certain that if the blindfold was off, Felix would be levelling me with an impressive glare. I was glad he couldn’t see my smirk as I bent down and distracted him, tasting his cock, the mildness of soap on my tongue, and then faint salt beneath that. As I sucked the head of him into my mouth, I saw his hands straight and stiff on the bed, before they curled sharply into the blanket.

Taking it slow was my priority, but Felix reacted even to this like I was quickly escalating. I slowed down further, sometimes stopping to just lick the underside of his cock, teasing him with my tongue.

Enough time passed, Felix no longer reacted like everything was a surprise and I reached for the oil and unscrewed the cap. It wasn’t liquid, but set into an ointment. I scooped a small amount onto my fingers, distracting Felix by taking half of his cock down, letting the head brush against the back of my throat.

He didn’t thrust upwards, his control impeccable even as I felt the wiry tension in his hips.

As the ointment warmed, it turned liquid smooth on my fingers. I painted some of it onto the base of his cock, over his balls, and then further back into damp heat. I’d expected Felix to tense, but he didn’t, and something about that bothered me.

It bothered me more when I slowly stroked my fingers over his hole and I felt a horrid swooping sensation in my gut, a plummeting realisation. 

He was scarred worse than last time. Much worse.

And Felix was acting as though nothing about any of this was a problem. And it _was_ an act. Whether one he was performing, or one that had been taught to him so well he didn’t know another way of being. As far as I knew, he hadn’t slept with anyone since Edwin Beckett and his monstrous team had used him to start the Clock of Eclipses. And whatever they’d done had been bad enough to leave permanent damage.

I was buying myself time – and trying to soothe him, though he didn’t seem to need it at all – by stroking my fingers over that tender skin, the lubricant making everything slippery and easy.

I moved my other hand up his belly and rested it over his heart, then stared blankly ahead. Oh, how it was racing.

It _was_ an act. Nothing about his relaxation was real. I hadn’t bothered to check last time, and I tossed up all of my options and decided to go with the one that would make this difficult for the both of us.

I’ve always been a bit like that.

‘You have scarring,’ I said, pushing forwards deliberately at his entrance without quite penetrating. ‘Here.’

At least his heart didn’t seem like it could beat any faster.

‘I assure you, Sir,’ Felix said, his voice honey smooth, ‘it’s not a problem.’

‘Since you had some scarring last time, I know that’s true to a point. Were you not treated after the Clock of Eclipses?’

I wanted something real. Wanted something that matched what I felt beneath my palm and fingers. A shadow wasn’t supposed to conceal anything from their flame, but I needed to take my own advice, I didn’t know a damned thing about martyrs and it showed. But the more I learned, the more I realised it was a system that didn’t neatly dovetail with the flame and shadow system at all.

‘An interesting definition of bedroom talk, Sir,’ Felix said, without answering my question at all.

I shoved away the flash of anger. We weren’t in the Copse, this wasn’t some new shadow deliberately pushing boundaries to see what they could get away with, it wasn’t even Cateline, playfully avoiding a question to see if I was in the mood to dole out playful or serious discipline.

‘I asked you a question, Felix,’ I said firmly.

 _That_ got the reaction that nothing else did. Felix’s lips pressed together, and I felt his hole clench against my gently stroking fingers.

‘No, Sir,’ Felix clipped out.

‘Thank you,’ I said, and then let warmth infuse my voice. ‘Very good, Felix. Thank you.’

He reacted to praise the way he didn’t react to someone finding unexpected scarring. I wanted to take him apart like I could the enemy when staring at a map of a battlefield. I wanted to pick him to pieces and then put him back together again.

Clearly too many years of going without had turned me somewhat mad. I flinched immediately. No, not something to joke about. Not after Clovis. I forced myself to pay attention.

Felix was slowly relaxing again, I focused on that instead. If I wanted any real information from him, I’d have to be prepared to ruin what we were doing, and I wasn’t. I knew he didn’t like volunteering information about himself, and I understood that I was asking about a personal matter, but I literally had the pads of my fingers against little ridges of scar tissue that felt different to the skin around it. He still gave me nothing.

Gently, I pushed my index finger inside, twisting and feeling deeper. The old scarring was there, faded to almost complete softness and easy to miss if one didn’t know what to look for. The new scars hadn’t pressed nearly so deep, and seemed – thank the Lady for small mercies – superficial. And Felix’s heart wasn’t racing as much now. He wasn’t relaxed, but he wasn’t panicking.

I was left with the knowledge that his body was fully trained to deceive whoever he was with into thinking he was relaxed and enjoying himself. Given I couldn’t trust his reactions, I no longer had any real confirmation that he’d enjoyed himself last time, except that he’d said so and seemed sincere in the rose garden when we spoke of it. And, he’d agreed to this now without any money on the table.

I decided to go ahead anyway, craving the changes in his breathing as I stroked him inside, loving the feel of that snug tightness. I could imagine Gisela’s arched eyebrow, continuing when I knew so little, after all – he was no longer some bluet shadow, and I was no longer a high-paying fish.

I took my time opening him. I wanted him undone by my fingers and my mouth before we got any further, and I was happy to take my time. Felix began to writhe when I got two fingers into him, rubbing occasionally over his prostate, sometimes bending down to suck the head of his cock into my mouth, rubbing my tongue over it.

The controlled relaxation gave way to real arousal. Sweat broke out under his nose and across his forehead, and then his chest. His breathing sometimes shook. His hips arched in small, seeking movements. I kept him at that level of sensation. Not enough to drive him to come, just enough to be maddening.

‘Now,’ I said evenly, when his voice broke on a whimper so delicious I wanted to bite his throat, pin him down and fuck him – I wasn’t nearly hard enough to manage that. Not yet. ‘Let’s think about your earlier transgressions. Your stubbornness hasn’t gone unnoticed, Felix.’

He was tense again, though my fingers still slid easily inside of him – the lubricant was fine quality – and he laughed breathlessly.

‘It never does, Sir.’

I was treading over ground others had destroyed before me. I doubted there was anything I could do to him which hadn’t been done, nothing I could show him that was new. The only thing I could change was the execution of it, and I suspected not many people treated him with much respect in the past.

‘I think some gentle edging is in order,’ I said.

I was going to do that anyway. I didn’t think anything good would come of formal punishments with Felix. Cateline might have craved them, but this one needed something else.

‘Is that all, Sir?’

 _Is that all._ I almost laughed.

‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Not enough for you? Shall I draw and quarter you as well?’

Felix started to laugh, and the sound strangled off when I pushed fingers up hard into his prostate. His hips jerked, arched unconsciously backwards – it really was an unfair amount of pressure – and then shook as he forced them to settle.

‘Well?’

Felix opened his mouth, closed it again when I slid a third finger into him. The scarring had stretched nicely, but I was pushing now.

‘Felix, I’m waiting for an answer,’ I chided, fucking him with my fingers and bending down and taking half of his cock into my mouth. He cried out sharply, one of his hands came back and slapped down into the blanket hard enough that I heard it. Holy Lady, he was so responsive.

‘I- Of _course_ , I- Whatever… Whatever you wish, Sir.’

I didn’t stop, making good on my promise to draw him close to orgasm. This I knew how to do, and it was easy enough to read in the twitches of his cock against my tongue, or the way he alternatively clenched and relaxed against my fingers. There was a winding up of tension, his legs pressing harder against me, his thighs trembling, a deepening of breath followed turning abruptly shallow.

I lifted up from his cock and let my fingers still within him, and he thrust up into air and made a sharp sound of loss.

‘Beautiful,’ I said, more to myself than to him. And then to him: ‘You get better with age, my dear. Everything about you is perfection.’

A hiccup of something that could have been a laugh or disbelief.

‘Calm down now,’ I said. ‘Deep breaths.’

He automatically took them, and one of his hands lifted up and idly dragged over his belly and chest, languid and sensual, before drifting down to the blanket again. I wondered if his eyes were closed or open behind the blindfold.

‘Very nice,’ I said, as he settled once more. I stretched up over him, keeping two fingers inside of him and brushed my lips against his jaw. His head turned automatically, mouth seeking, and I kissed him. The moment I slid my tongue into his mouth, he clenched down hard on my fingers, one of his hands came up and clasped my other arm where I was bracing myself.

Small, kittenish noises, so sweet even now. I filed it away. I’d kissed him last time and it had made him so pliant, he reacted like a virgin every time. When I withdrew, his fingers uncurled from my arm, and I shivered pleasantly when he stroked over the faded muscles there, the hair, dragging fingertips through it before his hand fell back to the mattress.

‘I’m going to run out of superlatives,’ I said as I stared down at him, enjoying the way the blindfold stopped him from seeing me in turn.

‘From how you are the rest of the time, Sir, one would never guess- _Ah,’_ I’d started thrusting my fingers inside him again, withdrawing nearly all the way out before adding the third back and pushing deep. He took several quick breaths and then kept speaking. ‘One would never guess what a flatterer you are.’

I shifted back between his legs, my other hand stroking down over his thighs, curving beneath to feel the softer skin there.

‘You think I’m being insincere?’ I said, and Felix grimaced. From the delay in response, it was clear he thought I was falsely praising him. There was no point taking offence to it, I wasn’t the one that had taught him not to trust it. But I waited to see whether he’d lie to me, or find some other way to avoid the question, or if he’d learned that if I asked a direct question, I wanted a direct response.

‘I think you have your fingers inside me and I’m good to go, Sir. You don’t need to keep it up.’

Yes, well, when I’d imagined this affair in the months preceding, I hadn’t expected to feel so terribly sad. I curled my fingers up inside of him to buy myself some time. He was indeed ‘good to go.’

_You don’t need to keep it up._

‘But you are exquisite,’ I said softly, ‘and since I can’t tell everyone else what a marvel you are like this, I’ll share it with you. Is that a problem?’

‘No… No, Sir.’ He was nervous, he didn’t trust it, and I suppose it was out in the open now.

‘Good,’ I said.

I bent down and took his cock back into my mouth, fingers inside of him, and I stroked his thigh like I was trying to pacify him when I really wasn’t.

I took my time stirring his arousal, slow and sensual, not caring about the time that passed and noting when impatience entered his voice though he didn’t once tell me to go faster. When I dug my nails into his thigh, he tensed and cried out, and if he’d been any closer, he would have come at that moment. But he didn’t, and I scratched my nails over his skin again and again and wound him up until he shivered.

This time when I stopped, he stayed tense and locked up, sucking in a huge breath and tilting his head all the way back like he could stare at the headboard instead. I watched his chest as he exhaled, and couldn’t resist reaching up and feeling the skin and muscle there, fingers moving to explore one of his nipples.

‘Ah, please,’ he murmured, though he didn’t seem to be aware of saying it, sagging back into the bed.

‘There we are,’ I said. ‘You’re doing wonderfully.’

He didn’t even tense this time, his head turned towards the pillow, still catching his breath.

I withdrew my fingers from his ass and reached for the wooden dildo, getting more of the ointment up on my fingers and warming it quickly, slicking the toy when the lubricant turned liquid.

I had my fingers loosely curled around his cock when I pressed the blunt head of the dildo against Felix’s entrance. I watched hungrily as the head of it slipped inside, and Felix moaned weakly as I slid it deeper, past the length of my fingers. I rocked it back and forth, pushing until he groaned, his belly jerked, and then grinned to myself.

It was easier this time to bring him close. I fucked him with the dildo, jacked his cock with my other hand, and this time it was only minutes before I needed to stop. I withdrew the dildo completely, and I saw his lips twist into the beginning of what might have even been a swear word.

‘Deep breaths, Felix,’ I said, delighted. ‘Calm down.’

 _‘Yes,_ Sir,’ Felix gasped, managing to infuse pure fury into his obedience.

‘It’s just edging,’ I said blandly. ‘Remember when you said ‘is that all?’’

‘All too well, Sir,’ he said.

I couldn’t help myself, I stretched up again, squeezing his cock in one hand and braced on my other arm so I could stare down at him.

‘You’re an awful lot of fun like this,’ I said.

He opened his mouth, and whatever he’d been about to say I swallowed when I kissed him. He resisted at first, then melted into it with a weak little grunt. And as I kissed him, I let go of his cock, reached for the dildo and slid it back into him, feeling the way his breathing abruptly changed. Yes, I was definitely getting hard now. But I’d been amusing myself with his body for at least an hour.

He was still far too articulate, and I knew we had a long way to go.

The next time I brought him close to orgasm and stopped, his voice broke and he said nothing at all. The time after that, his cock red and likely sore, his whole body twisted until he pushed his face into the bed. I shoved him back with firm hands, and he gritted his teeth together and made a sound that was frustration and need.

He didn’t beg me then, swallowed down whatever he’d been about to say, and then whimpered when I kissed the soft skin of his pelvis. Among the faint taste of soap, the salt of sweat as well.

When I started once more, back to my fingers inside of him – easier to stimulate his prostate directly – and my mouth on his cock, his voice unlocked.

‘Sir, _Sir_ , I can’t- I _can’t_ again, I shouldn’t have said what I said earlier, _please-’_

I breathed over his cock, then said, ‘I know, Felix. I know. You’re enduring this so well. A little longer, and you’ll have some relief. Can you do that for me?’

Frantic nodding, but I was cruel in letting him think that he might get to come _this_ time when I planned for it to be the next.

Indeed, when I stopped, protests spilled out over his lips one after the other, ‘no, please, Sir’ as though they were the only words he knew. I lay over him and kissed him senseless, his voice and broken noises humming into my mouth, his hands dragging up the blanket and then grabbing my arms and then resting shakily against my sides. None of his touches forced me to do a thing, and I had one hand buried in his hair, dizzy with how much I wanted him, for I’d teased myself into heat and need as well.

His breathing never fully calmed, and when I slid myself into him – thicker than the toy and my fingers – his hips arched, his head tilted back, mouth open. I ignored his cock for now, it didn’t need any more direct attention, and slid my hands over his sides, down his arms, and he shuddered heavily.

‘Just perfect,’ I managed, the feel of him squeezing down on my cock incredible. I moved slowly at first, gauging how aroused I was, and then found a firm rhythm that was easy. My body was feeling it; I was older, my scarred arm was protesting, but the pleasure more than weighed out any of the pain.

I know that I called him beautiful, I know that I told him that his hair was wild and glorious, that he felt like sin around me, the words spilling out easily. And unlike before, every time I spoke, he shifted like he could press closer, his hands moved further along my body until his arms were twined around my neck, one of his legs came up and hooked around my thighs. Distantly I wondered if I’d given him too much control, but I was too pleased, too shot through with heat to care.

It surprised me when he came without a hand on his cock. He bucked up in quick, seeking moments and then gasped hoarsely, and nails dug into my arm and then released just as quickly. I watched with satisfaction as his mouth opened wide, breath strangled, his whole body pulled taut, and then he was spilling between us, two of the spurts shooting up to his chest. I dragged my fingers through it and pressed them into his mouth, and he sucked at them needily. I groaned to see it. 

It was another good five minutes before I came, and Felix was so generous, knowing he had to be exhausted and sore and tired. His hole squeezed around me regularly, his hands stroked through the hair at my chest, over my sides, like he had no reason to fear touching me now that I couldn’t keep his orgasm from him.

When I came it was almost painful, pushing myself twice in one night. But I liked the sore pull of it, the feeling of being buried deep, losing myself in dark hunger. When I came back to myself, I realised I’d gathered Felix up with my good arm, holding him so close to me that the pressure had to be too much. I eased my arm free and he sagged limply into the bed, pulling deep breaths, chest heaving.

I slid free carefully and lay half on top of him, a leg between his, arm possessively slung over his chest and shoulder. I pressed my mouth to his neck, my cheek on a generous bed of curling red hair, and he moaned and turned towards me.

A few minutes later his legs shifted, a familiar squirm, and I dragged my hand lazily down his chest and belly and was filthy enough to check for my own come between his legs, dragging fingers through it, pleased to have marked him.

Felix lay there in a daze for some time, quiescent and lax, even with the blindfold still on. I watched him, pleased and content, but also wary of his emotional state. There was just too much I didn’t know about, too much I was learning that was a matter for some concern.

But I didn’t want to let this space go. Even with his vast complications, I didn’t realise how much I’d missed this, missed _him._ As we tangled together – Felix’s breathing turning slow and heavy, no longer forced to neutral evenness – I felt the dull humming of the ocean as it pounded against the cliff that Grimglass lighthouse loomed over, and liked the sweaty mess we’d made.


	4. The Sim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes. Everything is just fine. Some hurt/comfort in this one, flashbacks, and Murtagh being pushy.

_Murtagh_

*

Felix slipped into a light sleep after I removed the blindfold, and it was a far cry from the polished professional I’d seen in the beginning, two years ago, as awake and alert as he could manage after what I’d put him through, taking his payment and leaving with a quick, flashing smile.

I liked him better like this. It seemed more honest. His face softened while he slept, those canny eyes hidden, his hair wild and mussed and curling so much I realised he must do things to it to stop it from looking so untamed. But I liked his hair like this, too. He wore it in a length uncommon for Corambins, and I wondered if it was normal where he came from.

After a while I got up, restless and stuck in my own mind, spent from what we’d done together, but still curious about all the things we might be able to do in the future.

I made a slow circuit of his room and ended up in his bathroom. It was far larger than I expected, with a decent bath, ceramic toilet and a shower. Copper piping wound across the room prettily. There was even a sink, a mirror, a vanity. The bath itself was claw footed and looked second-hand, the ceramic having discoloured to yellow in places over time. But there were no cracks, the drain was sound.

From my visits to Kay and Vanessa, I knew that Mildmay was considered something of an engineer. Kay talked frequently about how good he was, and I’d not thought on it much, assuming that it was just the praise that sprung out of friendship. After all, Kay had sparingly few friends, and Mildmay and Kay were often in each other’s company.

But Mildmay had made that pulley lift, and had no doubt figured the plumbing in here, and how to place the drains in a lighthouse built of stone so ancient that nothing should be able to get through it. I knew he’d done jobs around the village, he’d drawn the blueprints that helped improve the bridge that led back to civilisation.

It was impressive.

I walked back into Felix’s bedroom, also study and library, closet and likely a good place for brooding. Though I still wondered if the lighthouse was haunted, Felix’s room felt clean of that strange, dark energy that clung to the base.

About twenty minutes later, Felix stirred against me where I sat back against the headboard. He made a faint, sweet noise and pressed closer to my leg. My hand dropped down and tousled his hair, and I watched his eyelids flutter open.

‘How are you feeling?’ I said.

‘Fine,’ he said, the word easy and pleased.

‘Still tired?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you want me to draw you a bath?’ I said.

He said nothing for a little while, then shifted and looked up at me like I was a strange creature he wasn’t familiar with. That only made me want to pamper him more.

‘I imagine you’re feeling a bit sticky,’ I couldn’t help but add, and he made a face at me, then rested his head against my thigh. His fingers came up and drifted over a scar that was so old I no longer had any idea how I’d gotten it. His palm curled over my knee, fingers cupping it almost protectively.

‘A bath would be nice,’ he said. ‘I can do it myself, of course. If you’d rather be elsewhere. Or sleep.’

‘If you think I don’t largely do whatever I please, whenever I want,’ _outside of that marriage and upholding the entire Carey name,_ ‘you don’t know me very well.’

‘Draw me a bath, then,’ Felix said, an indulgent challenge in his voice. I laughed and made a point of draping a huge hank of his hair over his face as I walked away. He made an annoyed sound, flipping his hair back with his hand and went limp as I vanished. Yes, I’d worked him over very well. I didn’t think there were many things more satisfying than a shadow pliant and soft and exhausted.

I found the plug and ran the water, making the bath as hot as I would have liked it. While I waited, I went back to the bedroom and put my shirt on. Felix breathed slow and even once more. I ran my hand over his hair and he made a rumbling, pleased noise and buried his face into pillows.

When the bath was done, I helped him up with a hand at his side, and he was coltish and still half-dazed with tiredness and what we’d done. He yawned as we entered the bathroom, the sound loud.

I helped him into the bath, he hissed at the temperature of the water and then sighed.

‘This is nice. I always thought it should be hot enough to half-cook someone.’

‘Of course. Why bother otherwise?’

‘Truly,’ he said, then lowered himself down, stretching his legs out wiggling his toes.

I kept my hands on him once he was settled, kneeling beside the bath on the mat. I was being far too selfish, but I liked wearing the shirt while he was nude. I liked touching him during an act he associated with privacy.

When he went to ease his shoulders deeper into the water, he slipped, grasping the edge of the bath and laughing once, sharply.

‘How embarrassing.’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘Here, I’ll help you.’

I already had one hand at the back of his neck, helping him down. I placed my other hand gently between his collarbones, soothingly at his throat. The water – so blissful I wanted to be in it myself – lapped around my fingers, up his chest, and reached his neck.

Everything that followed was too quick to properly register.

One moment he was lax in my hands, a sleepy kitten, the next his breathing turned high and airless and wheezing. He shifted violently in the bath, water splashing all over us. He clawed his way up my body, his fingernails sharp little weapons. There, suspended with his fingers stuck into my arms, his head higher than mine, he took strangling, sharp breaths. I was bleeding. I was bleeding through my shirt from his _nails._

I hadn’t expected it. Couldn’t have expected it. But I knew what it was.

Knew because I’d fought battles and fought in wars. Knew because I had friends who were soldiers. Knew because there were times when the sound of a particular horn made me nearly piss myself, and I was grateful there was only one place in the world I was likely to hear it.

The bath hadn’t frightened him. I began sorting through the things that could have set this off, and then my mind – a flame’s mind – swept all of that away and told me to focus on the terrified animal creature hanging onto me like I was a tree.

‘Felix,’ I said quietly. There was no change at all in his breathing. ‘Felix, I need you to tell me where you think you are.’

Nothing except those horrible gasps for air, gurgles at the back of his throat like he’d accidentally swallowed water. I had one arm around him, supporting him, keeping his hips half out of the water. I didn’t remember catching him, but I didn’t let go.

‘Felix,’ I said. ‘It’s me, Ferrand. Murtagh. I need you to tell me where you are.’

It felt like it took forever – though it could only have been about another ten breaths – before Felix managed:

_‘The Sim.’_

Distantly, I knew it as the river that wound its way through Mélusine, the city in Marathat where he was exiled from. But that wasn’t what grabbed me. Instead, it was like he’d channelled another person through him. For a horrified second it reminded me of Clovis, because that accent wasn’t Felix’s _at all._ It wasn’t even Mildmay’s, though it was its relative. It was some heavy, sliding thing, uneducated vowels and slurred consonants.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I’d heard Mildmay’s accent before, I would have thought Felix possessed. I still wasn’t sure.

‘No, Felix,’ I said, my voice unwavering, as firm as it needed to be. ‘This isn’t the Sim. Can you try again? Where are you?’

Felix’s breathing changed. It hitched and stumbled over itself and his hands squeezed harder into my arms. I winced. His hands were strong, and I could feel every pinprick pain where his nails had cut through cloth and then skin. I’d need to clean them well.

He shifted clumsily, water sloshing in the bath. Then he looked around the room. I felt the moment his awareness came slinking back. His trembling was more noticeable, but his shoulders curled like he could hide. Then they stiffened and he pushed back and stared at me.

‘Do you know who I am?’ I said.

If he wasn’t used to moments like this – and I didn’t think he was, or he would have warned me about the bath – then inevitably, he would close up. I cursed the damned bath, and myself, and this whole evening, and my lust for him, because I knew I didn’t know enough about him and here I was, making a mess of things out of some boyish eagerness I thought I’d left behind me near thirty five years ago.

But I’d been trained to deal with unexpected hostility. I’d even been trained to deal with flashbacks. The Copse was thorough, even when I’d plainly told Keane I had no interest in damaged shadows.

‘Felix,’ I said. ‘Do you know who I am? I need you to tell me.’

‘Murtagh,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

And his voice was his again, a flush of shame colouring his cheeks. My heart hurt for him. I was sure the events of the night had pushed him into a more vulnerable space, so this was my fault too.

‘All right,’ I said, as much to brace myself as it was to steady him. ‘We’re going to get you out of the bath. I’ll get you some water. I’ll-’

A light laugh, painful in its need to try and reassert control. ‘But I’m fine,’ Felix said. ‘I apologise. I’m not normally-’

‘Your voice is shaking,’ I said bluntly. ‘How stupid do you think I am?’

‘I’m hoping very,’ Felix said, and then his eyes slid away.

‘At least a _little,_ since I did something that set you off.’

 _‘No,’_ Felix said. ‘It was-’

‘If you’d known that was going to happen, you would have warned me off. A shower, instead of a bath. Nothing at all until I was gone. I’m sure you’d like me to pretend it didn’t happen, but I’m not that kind.’

‘Then you could at least _let me go_ and _leave me to it,’_ Felix spat, with the swell of hostility I’d initially expected. And then his eyes widened and he stared at my arm. ‘Goodness. You’re bleeding.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Did I…?’

‘Through my shirt, no less. That’s quite a hidden skill.’

A breath of nervous laughter, all I could think was _good, good,_ because I needed him less hostile and receptive to me. If he drove me away now, I couldn’t imagine coming back without him remembering this instead of everything else we’d done.

Felix lapsed into silence. Another person might have been scared off, intimidated by the flashback, and even I knew it would be easier just to _leave,_ but my arm tightened around him. I could feel the lumps and ropes of all of those scars across his back. The Sim hadn’t caused those. My instincts were used to piecing together what it was that set my soldiers off, and they told me he’d drowned in the Sim. If my fingers at his throat had been what started it, then he’d been drowned by someone else.

‘Now, shall we get you out of the bath?’ I said easily.

‘I’m not an invalid,’ he said.

‘I’m aware.’ I could sense how he bristled and decided on: ‘Felix, if you think I haven’t seen this among my men and women on the battlefield, you are sorely mistaken. This is nothing new to me.’

He peered at me through thick, dark red eyelashes. 

‘I can bathe alone,’ he said.

I almost allowed him that, but this was damage control, and while he seemed perfectly aware and in possession of all his faculties, I’d edged him for well over an hour, after he’d gone – from what I understood – two years with nothing more than his fingers and a couple of toys. I thought back to how he’d dozed like that on the bed, nothing like a whore and everything like a freshly tumbled man who needed to sleep the intensity of it off.

I wasn’t going to leave him alone.

‘Try again,’ I said.

He scowled at me, and I raised my eyebrows at him.

‘You’re rather annoying,’ he said.

‘I am.’

‘If you think-’

‘If _you_ think I won’t leverage my bleeding, poor arms – you know one of them is scarred, don’t you? – against you in order to get what I want, then you don’t know me very well.’

His eyes widened, and then he seemed to think it over. He offered a small crooked smile. One I’d never seen before. Not once.

He behaved like he was perfectly fine, like this happened to him regularly, but he still trembled in my arms. And they were no fine shivers. The rush of it was slow to fade and I thought it telling that he hadn’t settled his full weight back into the bathtub. Maybe it hadn’t bit at him before like that, but he knew it could now.

_See what you do, when you know nothing about him?_

‘If you still wish to clean off, I can help you shower,’ I said. ‘Unless that’s dangerous territory too?’

He looked tired then. And no wonder, he’d been all sleepy vulnerability less than ten minutes before. But he was past his limits, and I thought asking him to make some decisions might help him feel as though he had some more control again. Instead, he looked exhausted and burdened by it.

‘Come on,’ I said, standing and hauling him up. ‘We’ll shower. I can clean my wounds.’

Felix looked at his own fingernails. Some of them were bloodstained. I saw that one of his nails had broken at the tip. As he looked at it, I took it up in my own hand and examined it.

‘What a dazzling end to the evening,’ Felix said drily, as I reached the copper piping of the shower with its little depression and drain – how had Mildmay worked all of that out? – and turned it on.

‘The evening’s not over yet, Felix,’ I said.

Felix looked at me, surprised.

‘What,’ I said. ‘Did you think I was going to clean up and leave?’

His expression told me that was exactly what he expected. It wasn’t far from the truth, I _was_ going to leave in the morning after we’d had a chance to talk. But from the way he looked at me, it was as though he’d expected me to saddle up the horse in the dead of night and what…gallop back to Grimglass village?

Kay wouldn’t like that at all. And Vanessa would have me hung.

I pushed him gently into the shower, keeping an eye on him as I peeled off the clinging, splashed fabric of my shirt. I stared at my arms. One was bleeding considerably worse than the other, but only in little trickles, nothing to worry about.

I joined Felix. The shower was hardly made for two, but he didn’t complain. I thoroughly soaped off my wounds first, opening up any that had started closing to make sure they didn’t sour. Felix watched quietly. He was a wizard with a past I could only begin to fathom – and from the way they spoke in the city, one of the most powerful wizards they’d ever seen – but he was also a shadow who had been pushed hard and ended up with a flashback for his trouble.

‘Here,’ I said, once my arms were rinsed, ‘I’ll clean you.’

Felix opened his mouth to protest, took one look at my face and subsided. I shifted him so he was fully under the spray of water. His trembling didn’t get worse, the water itself didn’t frighten him.

I soaped up my hands and started at his left hand, innocuous and safe. I pressed my fingers between his, I dug my thumb into his palm and by the time I moved my hands up to his forearm, he was beginning to sway with a tiredness I was grateful to see. This instead of hostility. I could work with this.

‘It’s a river in Mélusine, isn’t it?’ I said.

He tensed only a little, then hummed in acknowledgement. When I slid my soapy hand up into his armpit, dragging my fingers through the hairs there, he made a faint grunting noise, his eyes fluttering shut.

_Perfect._

‘Can you tell me what I did that startled you? Was it my hand at the back of your neck?’

I knew it wasn’t. I wanted to know if he knew it too.

He shook his head as I soaped his flank. Marvel of marvels, but my hand seemed to have him about as calm as he could be. The relief I felt was shocking in its intensity. I hadn’t realised I cared so much.

‘The front,’ Felix said, gesturing with his other hand at his throat. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘A terrible way to find out,’ I said with gruff sympathy, and Felix only nodded once, then pressed his lips together when I began soaping his belly. The soap made everything slick and easy, I almost smirked when I saw his cock twitch between his legs. At first I took it to be flattering. But then I thought how he’d certainly been trained to react to any sexual stimulus with arousal, and I realised that he assumed this was sexual.

I’d not intended it to be. I just wanted to touch him, soothe him.

‘You were drowned?’ I said.

‘Oh,’ he said softly, like he was hypnotised. ‘Many times.’

It sent a chill down my spine that he said it so easily. I withdrew from his belly and began soaping his other hand, working my way up his arm until I could soap his shoulder and armpit. I risked brushing sudsy fingers against the side of his neck, then the front, testing for triggers. He didn’t react badly. His breathing was slowing. The trembling was easing.

_Many times._

I kept cleaning him, and when I knelt – my bones feeling like they were creaking – to attend his legs, he placed fingertips on my shoulders.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Cleaning you.’

‘Surely even flames don’t do that.’

‘Why?’ I said, looking up. ‘What exactly is a tarquin, where you come from? You can tell me, while I clean you.’

I lifted one of his feet and his hands spread out to the tiled walls to brace himself. All the tiles were mismatched blues and greens, like they’d had to find whatever was available in Grimglass, instead of getting something made fresh from the ceramic factories in Great Ilhey.

When I slid my fingers between his toes, he gasped, like the touch was completely new to him. When I dragged my thumb down the arch of his foot, he squirmed.

‘Ticklish?’

‘Not quite.’

Even here, there were scars. Old and faded, the kind caused by bastinado.

‘Have you ever served in a military?’ I asked.

‘ _No,’_ Felix said, like I’d asked him if he’d come from the moon.

I ran my palm up over the strong tendon behind his ankle, then massaged around the ankle bones and he made a weak sound. I thought it would be something to have him for an entire weekend. To lull him and see how soft he could get. To draw out his ire and then placate him again.

‘So,’ I said. ‘Tarquins? Tell me about them.’

It was easier with the spray of the shower around us. Felix’s hair was soaked again, and even lank and tangled on his skin, he looked like some unearthly siren. Especially with those eyes of his. I gently prodded my fingers around the scar at his calf, he twitched his leg back.

‘Tell me,’ I said.

‘You’re very pushy.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘You should have seen me in Desperen Field. I was _very_ pushy.’

‘Well. But that was a war.’

‘Everything’s a war, if you think about it the right way,’ I said.

Felix laughed, indulgent and warm, and then as though I’d unlocked some door, he started speaking.

‘Tarquinage is the art of domination,’ he said. ‘But there’s a protocol associated with it, at least as far as I’m aware. Depending on who is running the house, and how much a tarquin is willing to pay.’

‘Pay?’

‘Martyrs are almost always whores,’ Felix said, as I carefully tested the muscle behind that hideous scar on his calf. I could feel how deep the scarring went. For the love of the Lady, it had gone nearly down to the bone. There was no way he didn’t feel that when he walked. ‘You know that very well, after all.’

‘What about outside of that?’ I said, confused. Of course people did everything for money, but surely-

‘It’s frowned upon. Especially to take the role of the martyr. _Especially_ when you’re a moll.’

I looked up, unfamiliar with the term.

‘Bluet,’ he said, smiling placidly. A man who liked other men.

There was something seething beneath that calm. I couldn’t tell if it was anger or some other distress, but he let me touch him, and when I smoothed palms over the backs of his knees, his eyelashes fluttered.

‘I was a tarquin for a time,’ Felix said. ‘Could you tell I’d been a tarquin when you met me? It seemed like you saw something I didn’t, about being a martyr, a shadow.’

‘It was clear that the role of shadow didn’t come easily to you,’ I said. ‘It still doesn’t.’

‘It’s what I am,’ Felix said.

But what did that mean where he came from? That he was a whore for sadists? That they weren’t obligated to offer him care, or time, or the bond that came from regular play? What did it mean that he spoke in that heavy, slurred accent when terrified of the Sim, and then spoke in these whole, educated vowels now? And how much of higher society had known this about him?

‘I know _that,’_ I said.

‘It’s so obvious, is it?’ Felix said bitterly.

‘If you’ll recall, you turned up at the Althammara all on your own, looking to be paid for it. But yes, I think if one knows to look, it’s obvious.’

He didn’t like that. Not at all. I stood, grunting, almost laughing at my own aches and pains. But if I was sore, then he was too. He hadn’t complained once.

‘How?’ Felix said, searching my eyes like he could read the answer there.

I placed my hands on his waist and turned him, and he stiffened because he didn’t like anyone seeing those scars. I soaped them carefully. My fingers dropped down and slipped between his ass cheeks and I cleaned him there and expected tension or discomfort, but he simply allowed it. Given how he tensed when I’d gently cleaned his feet, this felt like he was shielding some reaction from me.

Once I was done, I soaped my hands once more and lingered at the base of his neck, my thumbs digging into muscle that felt like it was one sheet of knot. He stayed tense for about a minute, then leaned forwards until his head pressed against the tiles.

‘I don’t think most people know to look for it,’ I said. ‘If that’s any reassurance.’

‘It’s not.’

‘The whole business of flames and shadows isn’t exactly frowned on here, though it’s not something I’m about to tell anyone at Our Lady of Mirrors, I know a few of them visit the Copse.’

‘The Copse?’

‘A flame society.’

‘So…a whorehouse?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘No money exchanges hands there, unless the flames are paying a tutor for their wisdom. And we pay a membership fee annually to have access to the rooms, but to also access advice and companionship. We host willing shadows, they’re never paid for it. They want to be there. Confidentiality is paramount.’

Felix’s silence was telling.

‘The only reason I paid for you,’ I said, ‘was that I couldn’t take up regularly with a shadow while married to Isobel.’

‘Ah. So you’re not…? Should I be offering commiserations?’

‘If anything, felicitations for her happy affair with Dunne. We’re still married.’

‘I think I remember him,’ Felix said, his voice turning relaxed as I kept working at his neck, easing up towards the base of his skull. ‘He _is_ handsome. And you? Are you upset?’

‘That she’s happier? No,’ I said, and then felt tired. ‘That we have never been free to pursue whoever we wanted? Well.’

‘The price you pay to stay in high society.’

‘It is that,’ I said blandly. When I dragged my knuckles down the back of his neck, he shuddered and leaned harder into the wall. ‘You like this.’

‘A dead person would.’

I grinned, glad that he couldn’t see it. But then I decided it was time to explore more difficult matters. I smoothed my hands over his shoulders, his upper arms.

‘What kind of tarquin were you?’ I said.

I expected his tension. The fact was, shadows who held power and arrogance and status, who felt themselves to be flames, could be disasters if let loose. It was rare that someone was truly, laterally, capable of both.

‘Cruel,’ he said. ‘Careless.’

I wanted to say: _The way they were with you?_ But I didn’t dare. I was already risking so much, taking advantage of his tired, vulnerable state to plunder for information I knew he wouldn’t reveal if he were alert and in any other setting.

‘A monster,’ he added.

‘All the better then, that you have become more comfortable with accepting that you’re a shadow.’

‘I wouldn’t say I was comfortable with it,’ Felix said to the tiled wall. ‘But it’s…better for everyone involved.’

I couldn’t help myself. I rose up very slightly on my feet and kissed the back of his neck, the hand resting on his ribs feeling the sharp expansion of his lungs as he gasped. He seemed weary, not just physically, but in some deep place I wasn’t sure anyone could ever reach. I wondered if he was also painfully aware of how much trust he was offering me. Showing me his back. Standing in the shower with his scars brushing against my chest. The words he was letting free.

It was a start.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘If I’d known you only four or five years ago,’ he said, stepping out of the shower before I was completely done, only slowing when I followed and made it clear I wanted to help him. ‘I would have excoriated you for being far too soft. And for a tarquin, no less. You kneel at my feet. You suck my cock. You inconvenience yourself for my comfort, like you are made of weakness instead of strength. Are you sure _you’re_ not a shadow?’

Was it spite? Either way, I’d been ready for it. I said nothing until he had no choice but to turn and look at me, and then I stared up at him as I wrapped a towel around him. His cheeks flushed past what the hot water had caused.

‘When you’re done trying to deal with your discomfort by bullying me, we can talk about this seriously,’ I said.

A flash in his eyes and his hand tensed hard in the towel where he held it about himself. He took two precise steps backwards, I waited patiently. I expected a sharp rise in anger or tension – rueing that I had this personality – but after a moment, he deflated.

‘Mildmay has said something similar once or twice,’ he said, then smiled off into the distance, a sad little thing. ‘It took him much longer to say so.’

‘He’s your brother.’

‘No,’ Felix said, shaking his head at me. ‘He’s just someone I bullied for so long that he stopped realising how wrong it was for a time. He knows better now. Mostly.’

‘Well, _that_ sounds like a story,’ I said.

I thought of how casually he said he’d been drowned many times, how eerie his voice was, and wondered just how many stories there were. Instead, when he reached for another towel to dry his hair, I smiled and stepped forwards, brushing his hands away. He looked at me cautiously, then dropped his arms with a sigh that sounded exasperated.

‘Going to tell me I’m a shadow again?’ I said.

‘I should be attending you,’ he said.

‘You have. And, if you can tolerate me visiting you in the future, you will again.’

He bowed his head and let me massage his hair and scalp.

‘I can’t help but feel like you’re dipping your feet in the water, testing me out,’ he said. ‘You can do whatever you like, I can tolerate it all.’

‘Tolerate,’ I said, flatly.

‘I have been trained to accept pain,’ he said, and something about those words made me feel sick the way nothing else that evening had.

‘Trained to accept it?’ I said, keeping my voice neutral.

‘Oh yes. So whatever you truly like, as long as you steer clear of my back, you can do whatever you wish.’

‘How very generous of you.’

Felix straightened abruptly, staring at me with narrowed eyes. ‘Have I offended you?’

I took the towel I’d been using on his hair and used it to dry myself. I shunted the dark anger away, he didn’t deserve it, and there were plenty of ways to deal with it that didn’t involve making Felix a target for something he didn’t deserve.

‘Shadows sometimes have an appreciation for pain,’ I said quietly. ‘It can be nurtured, of course, but you made it sound like you didn’t used to like it at all.’

‘Did I?’ Felix said, and then backpedalled so quickly I could almost see his brain rushing to try and appease me, when he was just being honest. I stepped towards him quickly and placed a hand on his chest, arresting whatever thoughts were tumbling in his mind. Or at least, pretending I had.

‘It doesn’t come to you naturally?’

‘Are you saying you don’t think I’m a martyr?’ Felix said sharply. ‘Because I can assure you it’s taken a long time for-’

‘I’m not saying that at all. And I’m talking about shadows. Plenty of them don’t want anything to do with pain.’

‘Well then, what is the _point?’_ Felix said, staring at me in confusion.

 _Holy Lady,_ I thought. _What in the name of all the Cymellunid Kings is happening now?_

Something else was falling into place, but heavily and painfully, like stones in a too-worn path. He’d told me that martyrs were usually whores, that he’d been trained to accept pain, that he could tolerate anything at all. It didn’t sound like someone who’d come to it voluntarily. Once more, I had to shove it all aside to chew on later, because he could read me far too well and any slight shift in my facial expressions made him change his reactions before I knew it was going to happen.

He kept me on my toes and generally I liked that, but right now I was doing mental acrobatics just to stay ahead of the conversation.

‘I don’t want you to simply tolerate this,’ I said. ‘I want you to enjoy it. In the way a shadow enjoys themselves. To offer your surrender, to struggle against whatever I set in place during, to feel satisfied by it afterwards. To know you have served well. To know you have been treated well in kind.’

Felix blinked at me. He opened his mouth, then closed it.

‘Sounds vastly different to what you’re familiar with, doesn’t it?’ I said.

‘Just stop,’ he said tiredly. ‘Stop whatever this is. Whatever you have to say, you obviously know more about it than I do.’

He walked out of the bathroom, discarding the towel around his waist as he went. I watched as he searched a drawer for a shirt, this one creased and worn, clearly meant for sleeping. It was a very pale blue, like the sky in winter.

I leaned against the bathroom doorframe, watching him. ‘I’m sorry for baiting you.’

‘I don’t know what you want.’

‘If you’ll recall, I was happy to talk when I arrived, but you ushered us both up here.’

‘Then I guessed wrong, didn’t I?’ he said waspishly.

I almost said that if I wanted to have a spat with Isobel, I could easily be at home on a day ending in ‘y’ and have one whenever I wished. We could throw in Savato and Domenica too, while we were at it.

_Careful, Ferrand. You’re tired too._

‘We’re tired,’ I said, opting for the truth. ‘And I pushed you hard earlier.’

He turned with fire in his eyes like that was the most insulting thing I’d said yet. I held up a hand.

‘I know, I know, you’ve walked through the fires of hell for whatever tarquins had you. I’m telling you that I pushed you hard, you can’t make me change my mind just because you’re used to so much worse. I’m at least as stubborn as you are, Felix, I’m not going to budge on this. You’re tired and I’m being unfair. I suppose I ask now if there’s some lounge I can sleep on.’

He looked at me for a long time, then exhaled in amusement and shrugged on his shirt.

‘The bed’s large,’ he said. He walked over to me and placed his fingers next to the wounds he’d made on one of my arms. ‘These should be bandaged.’

‘They’ve been cleaned,’ I said. ‘They’ll be fine. I only wish I’d earned them earlier.’

Felix stared at the wounds for some time longer, then swallowed. ‘It hasn’t been that bad for some time. Not since I was- I thought a lot of it was behind me. I love that bath.’

‘It’s not about the bath,’ I said. Felix got into the bed and held the blankets up for me, making it look easy and welcoming. I wished I could trust it, trust him, but I didn’t. I had no idea what he was thinking. The only time I could really trust was when he was driven so far past his barriers that he couldn’t use them anymore. I eased into the bed naked, still damp, and thought that for all that we were in the middle of nowhere, the mattress was extremely comfortable. I didn’t mind that it smelled of sex, either.

He turned and put out the lamp on the other side of the bed, plunging the room into almost complete darkness but for the fat candle that would burn for some hours yet.

‘So,’ he said, after some awkward minutes. ‘Flames stay, do they? When there’s no money involved?’

‘Is that new for you?’

‘No,’ he said, his voice softer now, genuinely sleepy, as though the bed had given him permission to no longer cloak how exhausted he was. I moved closer and when I reached to touch him, he leaned into it. His knees brushed against the top of my shins. Holy Lady, he was all limbs.

‘It’s not?’

‘Shannon,’ he said, as though that explained everything. He yawned into my shoulder, and then his breathing slowed almost immediately.

‘Did you love him?’ I asked, not having considered how many past lovers he’d had.

‘No,’ Felix said, shaking his head against me and then sliding one arm over my side, as though we’d been sleeping like this together for years. ‘I thought I did but…no. I loved Gideon.’

I lay there, staring past him into darkness.

Was it possible to want someone so badly when you knew nearly nothing about them? I reached up and stroked his damp hair, my fingers gently working through the snarls until he was limp and heavy against me, sleeping deeply.

I lay there, hearing the accent he’d used when he’d hissed ‘the Sim’ past my head, like it was an invocation of some terrible god of destruction. I realised that I was afraid of what I’d gotten myself into, and afraid of how much that wasn’t enough to make me stop wanting him.


	5. Nouveau

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tbh, I know that the lighthouse was meant to be attached to the Warden’s house but I just love the idea of a lonely lighthouse so much. Because you know what Felix can always be? Lonelier, apparently.
> 
> Also, when I first envisioned this fic, it was basically Murtagh and Felix having a lot of sex and a lot of conversations (with added PTSD). But I’ve realised that a big challenge to that is getting Felix to talk? About anything personal? Ever? Haha. Ha. Wow this will be a ride.
> 
>  **New tags:** Subdrop, dissociation.

_Felix_

_*_

Near early morning I woke and my mind refused me sleep. I lay there – Murtagh pressed along my back, his body an absolute furnace of heat – and thoughts of Gideon plagued me.

The last time Murtagh and I had engaged in anything at all, I hadn’t stayed long. I’d rested for as long as my incoherence made me, accepted my payment, left him to his fancy rooms in the Althammara hotel and left richer literally and figuratively. There’d been very little time to think of Gideon, or what it meant to be a martyr, or even how much Murtagh reminded me of Malkar.

By the end, none of it had mattered, and I had coins to continue caring for Mildmay.

But I’d never shared this bed with anyone else. And the last time I’d spent the night with a lover…

Had it been Isaac? Or Gideon?

I smiled bitterly into the darkness of my room and wondered what Gideon would make of all of this, with his dark, perceptive eyes, his revulsion around anything to do with tarquins and martyrs. His love that I needed so desperately, when he hadn’t truly known me at all.

He’d shown me so much more of himself than I’d ever shown to him. He was so generous. But the day I tried to broach the subject of tarquins and martyrs with him, out of my mind with a need I hardly understood myself and sure I could make it good for him if he let me… No, I’d seen the look on his face, the twist of his mouth, the same disgust he used when he spoke of the Bastion, the worst of the Eusebians.

After that day, I told myself nothing had changed. He suffered the humiliation of letting me penetrate him, even though it didn’t come naturally to him and he didn’t always come no matter how many tricks I pulled from all I’d learned with Lorenzo, or at the Shining Tiger, or with Malkar. He’d gently – so gently – tried to seek a give-and-take I never allowed him, until my inability to compromise caused a barely contained fury. He’d stare at me like it wasn’t just the ghosts of the past making me too afraid to accept what he offered, but like I did it to spite him.

Now, having allowed Murtagh to dominate me, hurt me, use me, my chest panged that I’d not allowed Gideon the same when I’d loved him for years.

I reached up and wiped at my eyes with fingers that ached not just from the badly-healed breaks, but from clenching so hard at the blanket the night before, over and over again. Maudlin, ridiculous, and it wasn’t as though that was the worst thing I ever did to Gideon anyway, there was a list that stretched from here to the Myrian Mountains, and at the top was the method of Gideon’s death, and that I’d been fucking his murderer behind his back.

That would do it.

I eased out of bed, looking back at Murtagh as he slept. I wished the softness on his face lulled me, but it didn’t. He talked the way Malkar did, spun words the way he had, even some of his actions reminded me of him. The only difference between them was that Murtagh was kinder.

I’d jibed at him before; too soft, too innocent. He’d taken it like an insult and baited me with every word thereafter. But unlike Malkar, when I asked him to stop, he’d stopped.

Another difference, I supposed. Not so insignificant, but I wasn’t sure I trusted it.

I winced at the way my calf pulled and leaned into a stretch that I’d gotten used to doing most mornings. It seized terribly in the winter, and Mildmay offered to see to it, the way I offered to see to the scarring on his thigh, but it didn’t feel right to take him up on it.

He wouldn’t be back from Kay’s until mid-afternoon. Every Domenica, he tended to see Kay to the tiny little church – Our Lady of the White Waters – along with Vanessa and the rest, and they’d lunch after.

I went to church twice. Once just to see how they reacted to me wearing my rings – with the silent, staring scandal I expected, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I’d wanted to – and the second time to make sure Mildmay wasn’t forcing himself to do something he hated. Instead, I sat and watched Mildmay and Kay talk up a storm together after the service had ended.

Kay’s patience with Mildmay, and his eagerness to listen to Mildmay read to him, was doing wonders for Mildmay’s Lower City accent. I liked to tell myself that I was a more mature man now, that it didn’t sting. _Of course_ he responded to Kay better, for Kay was honey and I was vinegar.

And then I told myself I didn’t miss the drawl that was nearly indecipherable to everyone else. He still retreated to it sometimes, when he wanted to say something scathing or judgemental or sulky and didn’t want any of the Corambins – or Caloxans, in Kay’s case – to understand him. But Kay could pick out words in that drawl as well as I could, as though he, too, had known the Lower City accent all his life.

 _Then_ I had to tell myself I wasn’t jealous of Kay for having spent so much time with Mildmay – who clearly talked with him and enjoyed it – that he’d come to learn something as well as I knew it.

Older, but not wiser, nor – it seemed – happier. But Mildmay thrived away from the Mirador. It should have been more a consolation than it was.

*

Downstairs, I hung the kettle over the fireplace, and then stirred the coals until the flames caught on the sweet grasses Walsh dried in the stable. I tried not to think about what Lord Stephen would say, to see me tending a fireplace like a servant. I closed out thoughts of Shannon and the rest. Lately, locked doors blew open all too easily.

I cut two slices of the thick horsebread that Amice brought with him – stale now, he was due a visit – and set them into the toaster before hanging that over the flames. I scraped the rest of the crumbs into a jar. Mildmay or Walsh used them to thicken stews, and that was all I understood of the matter. So far, I’d managed to avoid learning to cook, after the first attempt led to the kitchen fire that Walsh refused to let me live down.

The judgement held in his expression the first time I’d stoked a fire with magic instead of ‘hard work’ had resulted in me asking Mildmay to teach me how to start and maintain a fire the annemer way. Mildmay – incredulous – had just told me to use my hocus-stuff. Then he’d taught me with a patience I wasn’t sure I deserved.

Even the hot water now was heated mechanically, through engineering with hardly any of my magic attached – though I had secretly bolstered the gears and machinery with my limited understanding of thaumaturgic architecture, and not told anyone except Virtuer Ashmead in correspondence. No one truly had need of a wizard – certainly not one who used to be a Cabaline – out in Grimglass.

I resisted sitting for as long as possible. I was tender and sore, and what had been overwhelming and fire-bright the evening before, lust and pain and pleasure twining together until I was insensate, was an aching lower back and a chafed cock and asshole in the morning. It was a feeling I’d known intimately from the age of eleven, though rarely could I pair it with the memory of anything pleasant from the night before.

And what a novelty it was. Murtagh had opened a door I never knew was closed to me, and I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it.

*

I walked down the corridor with a second cup of tea. The path was narrow and laid with uneven slate, the ceiling domed, and though I was much taller than every Corambin I'd met, I didn't have to stoop to walk down it. Halfway down the corridor were two doors facing each other. Both were the same strange black as though wood had been soaked in a sour, dark oil. In one, a storage closet for the kind of hard tools needed to maintain a lighthouse.

In the other, a platform with an intricate mazework mosaic upon it, until it became an uneven series of steep stairs that led down to a labyrinth under the lighthouse.

I couldn’t even be surprised when I discovered it two years ago. Weary and despairing, but not surprised. Mildmay had held his lantern out over the stairs after we’d unlocked the door, and said:

‘Fuck me sideways ‘til I cry. Tell me that ain’t what I think it is?’

‘It certainly explains the mikkary,’ I said.

But there wasn’t much clinging to the lighthouse, despite the horror on Mildmay’s face. And labyrinths didn’t scare me the way that they used to, I’d encountered so many of them.

‘I swear by all the powers, I ain’t sure I can take another one,’ Mildmay said, staring like I was about to use the now-broken obligation d’âme and force him to deal with it alone.

‘That’s good, because you’re not to have anything to do with it,’ I said, staring at him.

Mildmay’s dull horror had shifted to something else, and he’d stared up at me.

‘What?’

‘I can handle them on my own,’ I said, closing the door, locking it, and then placing my hand against it and warding it so that no one else could get in. I hoped what I said was the truth, but I really didn’t feel the same kind of mikkary here that I’d felt in the Phaidris labyrinth, or at the lost city of Nera. This was quieter, somehow. I wanted to explore it, but at my own pace.

Once I wouldn’t have given a second thought to making Mildmay negotiate all those unknown stairs down into an abyss of darkness, but time had passed, and his leg was no kinder to him. And I was nowhere near kind myself, but I could do better than before.

‘You ain’t going in alone!’

‘I am,’ I said. ‘Now, let’s keep exploring.’

‘Felix, you ain’t-’

‘I’m sorry, did I make it sound like I wanted to keep talking about it?’ I said, turning on him. ‘No. Of course not. You are not going down there, and you cannot stop me from doing the same. Leave it.’

He left it, at least for the next twenty four hours, but then he’d brought it up over and over again. How I wasn’t to go down there alone, how it was too dangerous, how they were often ‘batshit fucked’ and unpredictable. But I knew how much he hated them, and I wasn’t going to drag him into another one. It wasn’t like the dead could scare me as intensely as before, I’d exorcised the fantom while under the binding-by-obedience, after all. I had my magic back now, I’d learned something of my resilience around the dead.

I spent the next several months helping Mildmay and Walsh try and make the lighthouse liveable, and we stopped talking about it because I never brought it up again. But as I began to sort through Virtuer Grice’s chickenscratch notes, I realised he’d been obsessed with that labyrinth, and it may have gone some way to explaining why he became a complete hermit who stopped associating with society and the Institution until he died here.

Six months into our new lives at Grimglass, I went down and explored the labyrinth some time past midnight, using the uneven stairs and expecting Mildmay to know exactly what I was doing. But Mildmay slept through it, and I dealt with the labyrinth, acted as psychopomp to the ghosts trapped down there, and discovered that the thaumaturgic architecture that kept the light in the lighthouse functional was anchored to the labyrinth, which in turn, was powered by the sea.

Horrifying, given my hatred of deep water, but incredibly clever, and less toxic than nearly every other labyrinth I’d ever encountered except – maybe – the one beneath the Mirador. The only place where the Sim had been anything other than a black, oozing morass in my mind.

But I’d not realised how many hours the labyrinth had captured me for, nor how dazed I’d be when I went up those stairs on my own. I knew I couldn’t negotiate the rest of the stairs to my room and stumbled into the main room, only to trip and shear my calf open on one of the many large pieces of metal around the place.

Truthfully, I don’t remember the rest of it well. Only the sensation of falling, and the wet heat of blood that too quickly turned cold, and blearily saying:

‘Please, Malkar, _this_ much blood?’ A tone I never would have used when I was around him, and half-delirious and no small amount irritated to find myself bleeding to death while Mildmay slept soundly above me.

I remember hating the sound of my own voice as I shouted for him, hands clamped over my ears, feeling like a child. And I don’t remember him finding me, because I was unconscious by that point. I’d been very certain I was dead. I remembered that. Waking was a shock, and I wasn’t sure it was a relief.

Mildmay never let me hear the end of it when, three days later, he realised I’d gone down there alone. 

I sighed now as I ignored the black door – warded again to keep people out – and walked to Walsh’s at the end of the corridor, knocking on it gently with the backs of my knuckles. I heard him shuffling around, and he came to the door bright-eyed – I had no idea when he truly slept – and he looked at me, then took the tea.

‘Does Ferrand need anything?’ he said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s sleeping.’

‘All right. Do you need anything?’

I was the Virtuer of this lighthouse, the one responsible for its light, and he should have asked me if I needed anything first. But he never did. I couldn’t tell why he disliked me, and I was sure if I bluntly asked him about it, he’d find some way of making me feel as though I was imagining it. I didn’t think he’d liked Virtuer Grice much either. Maybe he just didn’t like magicians.

‘No, thank you, Walsh.’

I smiled stiffly at him, and then as I began to close the door, I hesitated.

‘You call him Ferrand? Did you know him when he was a child? He said he used to visit.’

‘Aye, he did,’ Walsh said, his heavily lined face creasing in a small smile. ‘Never got the hang of calling him Your Grace, ‘specially as the Duchy was supposed to go to his brother, Clovis.’

‘His brother?’

Walsh’s face clouded, and he squinted at me like he was suspicious of my motives. I had no idea that there was an older brother who was supposed to take on the mantle of ‘Duke of Murtagh.’

‘Did he die?’ I asked.

‘S’not my business,’ Walsh said, and then he took the door handle himself and closed the door on me. I blinked, and if it was years earlier, I would have demanded answers. But instead I took a deep, confused breath and walked back down the corridor, my calf twinging at me as I passed the black doors.

Of course, I’d forgotten about the toast, so it was charred by the time I took its toaster from the fireplace. I stared at it, and knew better than to throw it back into the fireplace. I’d done that once and the first floor had reeked of burnt toast for days. Instead I picked at pieces of it and sipped my tea and wondered why Walsh had told me that it wasn’t his business, instead of just telling me Clovis was dead. It was normal enough, wasn’t it, for siblings to die? Especially as the Carey family seemed to be a military one.

A few minutes later I pulled on a heavier coat to ward against the chill; the weather had turned and I would have to check the intricate workings that kept the light going, to make sure its magic was holding – though it always did.

Walsh obviously knew that Murtagh was staying the night, _with_ me. It had taken me a while to figure out the attitudes of the Caloxa and Corambis people towards men sleeping with men. Kay explained it to me one day and made it clear. Loving men was a sin, but fucking them wasn’t. Sin was in the mind, not in the act. So Kay believed himself to be full of sin and terribly impure, for loving Gerrard with an intensity that never wavered, even all this time later when he was married to Vanessa and settled and understood that his loyalty to Gerrard was part of the reason his sight had been ripped from him in the first place.

And Murtagh sinned not at all, because he fucked men but he didn’t love them. He loved his wife.

It went some way to explaining why Walsh didn’t seem to blink at Murtagh staying the night, despite being a traditionalist who had so many little statues of the Holy Lady in his rooms that it was nearly impossible to look in any direction without seeing one.

A short distance away, I heard the rumbling of the pulley. At first I thought it was Mildmay, because I’d already spoken to Walsh, and Mildmay was the only other who lived here. When I realised it was Murtagh, I fetched another cup and pressed my hand to the side of the pot. Still warm, at least. Though not for much longer. I should brew another batch of tea.

I wandered over to the box Murtagh had brought with him instead, opening it. Julian had a fair idea of what I liked now, but it was the books I cared about most, pulling them out one by one. The first was a thick treatise on the geography of Corambis, and promised to be dry and filled with jargon, I couldn’t wait to read it. Geographers were often just as opinionated as wizards, in their own way. The next was a new tome on the Titan Clocks. I put that down quickly. They were fascinating, but as I’d been fucked nearly to death in a ritual to bring one back to life, it could wait.

The third surprised me. _On the Nature of Magical Bindings and Their Principles,_ by Veria Threckwurst. I’d heard of it only in passing, it was shockingly hard to find, and the book itself was old, the fabric jacket worn and frayed, though a fair amount of gold leaf remained on the title. Someone had loved this book, or at least cared for it.

I looked up when I heard Murtagh approaching and grimaced.

‘Oh, dear,’ I said.

He picked at his shirt, which was blood-stained at the arms, and still bore the little holes where I’d stabbed him with my nails. I’d been trying to forget about it, but he had to wear the evidence of it.

‘I can talk to Walsh about a shirt,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ Murtagh said. ‘Perhaps before I leave.’

‘One of Mildmay’s might fit you.’

Mine would be too long, and too thin about the shoulders. Murtagh was a fair amount shorter than me, but built like he was going to head back out onto the battlefield at any moment.

To look at, he was nothing like Malkar. He was thick and sleek, his short, blond hair even paler than his skin. His golden amber eyes were warm most of the time, but they could turn cold and concise, or mercurial, and though they were expressive, he had a way of concealing what he really thought that left him a mystery to me.

Murtagh walked right up to me and grabbed my shirt, pulling me down. I expected the kiss to be claiming, ferocious, but instead he pecked me on the lips and let me go. I straightened, dazed, as he walked over to the pot, felt it himself, and then went to the sink and began to prepare a new one.

‘Ah,’ I said, floundering. In the past, servants handled this all for me. ‘Let me-’

‘Don’t concern yourself,’ Murtagh said dismissively.

And before I had servants, I would serve Malkar myself, and it was a criminal sin to do anything before offering it to him first.

And before Malkar…

‘Are the wounds in your arm doing well?’ I asked, distracting myself.

‘They’ll be fine,’ Murtagh said, as he set the pot over the fire. ‘I wanted to talk to you, since we didn’t get much of a chance last night.’

Personally, I thought we had plenty of chances. Too many.

‘All right,’ I said, letting my reluctance show.

He waved me over to the overstuffed couch that sat before the fireplace, and then he poked at the charred leftovers of my toast and his expression was somewhat rueful. I tried not to feel ashamed. Was it judgement? Something else?

‘Come here, Felix,’ he said, when I didn’t respond to his gesture.

I walked over. He looked not at all like Malkar, but he talked like him. He expected his orders to be obeyed, he behaved with authority. He had a way of filling up the room and my mind until I wondered if there was any room for my thoughts and opinions, if I would even know them properly if I saw them.

But where Malkar would have seen me remember the past like I had the night before, further poking the wound to see what would ooze from it, Murtagh had turned his will towards grounding.

The differences between them terrified me. Malkar had shaken me apart at every foundation, but Murtagh by some chance of fate found every other unbroken part of me, and threatened those too.

Once I was settled on the couch, leaning onto one hip and looking into the flames, Murtagh placed a warm hand on my wrist.

‘I’m going to be blunt. You don’t like talking about personal matters, but for at least the next little while, we’re going to do that. And then I’ll stop and we’ll make small talk and I’ll leave you be.’

I almost bit the tip of my tongue. _No one_ spoke to me that way anymore. The voice of Lorenzo in my head, at the Shining Tiger, _‘Here’s how it’s gon’ to work, Felix, you’re gon’ to get out there for the next three hours and earn me-’_

‘Felix?’

‘Should I be calling you Sir?’ I said, and Murtagh’s hand eased away from my wrist. I turned and watched him, and hoped for a second – just a second – he remembered what and who I was. But he didn’t look at me like the villagers did. He didn’t even look at me like the rest of the Curia used to, or my fellow Cabalines.

‘No,’ Murtagh said. ‘You’re not a morning person?’

‘Goodness, is anyone?’ I sighed and leaned back against the couch, my hair dragging on the nubby fabric. I thought of all the times Mildmay sat here, spinning his knife, deep in thought. Just as often he’d be reading the small newspaper that was printed in Grimglass village, or some book, or even playing card games with himself. I turned my head towards the couch and inhaled subtly, wondering if I could pick up his scent.

I couldn’t. Had my life been easier when I wanted him and only him? Of course not. Murtagh was still watching me, waiting for something more.

‘Go on then,’ I said. ‘Say whatever your piece is.’

‘Truthfully, I came wanting to start something of a regular…acquaintance with you.’

‘So you want to come and fuck me intermittently, when you have free time,’ I said, and wondered how I managed to sound so bored about it. When I’d seen Murtagh on the doorstep, I’d wanted him so badly I couldn’t think. Two years, I’d been sure that the chemistry between us was largely one-sided, and as I’d had increasing practice ignoring the objects I lusted after, I’d ignored how I felt, at least until I had my fingers inside myself back in the lighthouse, remembering how he treated me in the Althammara.

‘I wouldn’t have put it exactly like that,’ Murtagh said, wincing.

‘I’m to be your mistress?’ I teased. ‘Fuck-toy?’

‘Or like…that,’ Murtagh said, and then he laughed.

‘Well, you could say that I’m your ‘piece on the side.’’

‘You are merciless.’

I laughed, beginning to relax, and he seemed to do the same. ‘So it’s not any of those? Colour me confused, Your Grace.’

Murtagh smiled so smoothly it nearly took my breath away. ‘You can call me Ferrand, you know. It is my name.’

‘But _Your Grace,_ I couldn’t possibly,’ I said, all mock scandal. ‘Honestly, though, I’m sure you don’t want everyone and their dog knowing. If I’m the only one calling you Ferrand, when even _Kay_ still refuses to, then I can’t see this happening with any sense of discretion.’

‘You can call me Ferrand at moments like this, can’t you?’

I shrugged a shoulder. But I wondered if I could. It felt like it broke all the rules, but I didn’t know what the rules were. Just as the attitudes of men fucking men were different here compared to Melusine, the culture of flames and shadows was different here, too. I still didn’t clearly conceive how. Maybe Murtagh was just an idealist. Though he didn’t really seem the type.

‘I like you,’ Murtagh said, so openly that I imagined how everyone in the Mirador might have reacted. Warriors who wore their hearts on their sleeve? But no, he didn’t really. This was no Tibernian romance. I shifted, realising that this conversation might be harder for Murtagh than he made it seem. ‘For more than just your body, you realise. I enjoy your companionship. I’d like to enjoy it more. But I can’t give you much notice before I’m coming, and I’m certain that sometimes Mildmay will be here.’

‘He’s discreet,’ I said.

Mildmay had no idea I’d ever slept with Murtagh, let alone let him dominate me, and I wanted to keep that as much a secret as possible. Mildmay didn’t much like Murtagh to begin with. But Mildmay would figure it out, and then… Well, then he wouldn’t tell a soul.

Besides, he couldn’t begrudge me this, I happened to know far too much about Mildmay’s exploits in Grimglass, because Julian and Amice both liked to tell me all the town gossip. Apparently Mildmay’s tongue was famous.

‘He does seem that sort of fellow,’ Murtagh said. ‘But I wanted to be sure. And I still don’t know if you truly want any of this.’

_I’m still not sure either._

‘The lack of answer is demoralising,’ Murtagh added, arching a brow.

‘It’s complicated,’ I said.

‘I had gathered that much. Is it complicated in the sense that I came and ruined an evening for you? Or complicated in the sense that you’re dragging a lot of the past behind you, and it makes all of this challenging?’

The only other person I knew who talked so bluntly was Kay. Oh, and Vanessa. Probably Julian. Amice was also shockingly open, unless he was around Julian, and then his unrequited love was just a miserable bright light waiting for Julian to acknowledge it.

_Ah, maybe this is just how the Corambins and Caloxans are, then._

‘I enjoyed much of last night,’ I said, feeling like I was baring far too much, but Murtagh started it, and it felt unfair to leave it so one-sided.

I watched as Murtagh got up and fetched the kettle, pouring us both another cup of tea. It felt wrong to watch him doing it. To not be doing it myself. I loathed those instincts. I was no servant, he wasn’t my pimp, nor my master.

‘Isobel’s really fine with it?’ I asked finally.

‘She doesn’t know it’s you,’ Murtagh said. ‘But yes. I have her blessing to go roaming, so to speak. But I have no desire to have Wyatt bring me shadows I’ve never met or have only a passing acquaintance with. And you are- Well.’ Murtagh turned to me and then gestured towards me. ‘Just look at you.’

My cheeks burned, I almost preened under the flattery. But this wasn’t some stranger, or even some conquest. I was the conquest, and Murtagh put me on the back foot in a way almost no one else did.

‘I know nearly nothing about you,’ Murtagh said. ‘It bothers me. That’s fine for something that only happens once, but going into the future, it’s possible I’ll push you into situations like what happened in the bath again.’

‘An anomaly, I assure you,’ I said.

‘Maybe when I’m not around. But you were a shadow who was physically tired, and mentally invested in obeying me. It leaves you vulnerable, Felix. Surely you know that.’

I did. It was what Malkar had wanted, years ago _._

‘Then find someone easier,’ I said.

Murtagh stared at me for a long time, and then his lips quirked up in a half-smile. ‘No. I don’t think I’ll be doing that.’

‘Ah, you _are_ a shadow, secretly, aren’t you? Love suffering, do you?’

Murtagh’s half-smile blossomed into something full and warm and charming, and I wondered if his soldiers saw it and fell over themselves to die for him. And unlike so many other people I used to know, he didn’t get defensive – not as he had the night before – and he did nothing more than look at me like I’d pleased him. For talking back. For doing the very thing that would cause Malkar to leave me wounded and unable to move for days, if he chose it.

No, I didn’t like how often I thought of Malkar when I saw Murtagh, but I couldn’t help it.

But Murtagh deserved better than that. He was like him, and yet so unlike him, but understanding it was harder than trying to see the line between thaumaturgic architecture, and architectural thaumaturgy.

‘I do like challenges,’ Murtagh said finally. ‘I also respond to vulnerability. As you saw last night. Did I push you too hard?’

I shook my head. ‘Not at all.’

‘I suspect you have no idea if I did or not,’ he said after a pause. ‘The picture I’m building of your past isn’t pleasant.’

‘It’s not,’ I said. ‘What did you want to know? You already understand I was a prostitute, it’s how we met. You know I was exiled from Melusine. You know about the Clock of Eclipses. What more do you want to know about me?’

His honey eyes flashed hungrily, I felt a pit of terror open up in response.

He wanted everything. He wanted all of it.

And _that_ was Malkar all over. I stood and walked away from him, just to remind myself that I could. Murtagh didn’t follow me, and I ended up at the main table, staring down at a book about magical bindings. _Obligations._ I’d known three now. The sang. The d’ame. The binding by obedience.

‘I am fine with the fucking,’ I said finally. ‘The rest of it I’m uncertain of. If you want to talk about politics and the state of the world and the insufferable rat of a person that is Darne, we can do that for hours. We’ll even enjoy it. Everything else you’re asking for is not what I’m accustomed to giving to anyone, nor do I want to.’

‘You understand it will mean you’re more likely to fall into the past? It will be harder for me to catch you.’

‘Darling,’ I said, razors in my mind and falling out of my mouth, ‘if you think you’ll ever be the one to catch me, as I have caught myself, you are labouring under false delusion. You are not my saviour nor rescuer, and just because you were patient enough not to leave me last evening when I disappointed you – even though I would have preferred you not be there at all – doesn’t mean I owe you a thing.’

It wasn’t how I felt, but it was how I wanted to feel. Oh, I’d hated it at first, that he’d been there. But he let me cling to him, and he was unfailingly kind, but in a way that wasn’t cloying and only left me confused and more needy than I could remember being, not since Gideon had I been quite like that. The only person who was still alive that knew I was that needy was Mildmay, who had to accept me; we were related.

Murtagh watched me, face curious, not angry or clouded or mean. Like he wanted to hear the barbs too. It was impossible.

‘You’re too alone in this lighthouse,’ Murtagh said.

It was as though he brushed aside everything I threw up to protect myself, and shoved his fist into the rift inside of me.

‘I’m not the one in such an unsatisfying marriage that I need my secretary to procure shadows so that I may fuck them on the side, year after year. If we’re speaking of loneliness, that is.’

As soon as I said the words I regretted them. I’d spent years trying not to be this person anymore. Spent years learning how to swallow these words, eating the poison so that others wouldn’t have to bear it.

I realised belatedly I was punishing him for wanting my openness. He’d been nothing but respectful this morning, and I wanted to wound him for it.

‘I apologise,’ I said. Words I hated. An apology to Malkar was as good as asking to be beaten, or used in one of this blood rituals. It was _permission._ ‘I am being terribly rude.’

‘I’m pushing you to it,’ Murtagh said, sighing. ‘But I’m worried that this is all it takes for you to end up here.’

‘You’re being incredibly patient.’

‘Well, I had a very lovely evening,’ he said. ‘It’s easy to be patient.’

‘And if I tell you I don’t want any of this? That I want you to leave?’

‘Then we’ll go back to how it was before,’ Murtagh said, staring at me steadily, like he knew I needed to hear it. ‘Felix, I have spent two years wanting you. It hasn’t entered my mind to pressure you, or to leave little crumbs for you to pick up while denying you or myself. Should you tell me that you’ve had enough, even now, I confess I’d want to know what wrong I’d done by you, but I would leave even if you didn’t tell me.’

‘Can you turn it on and off then?’ I said, not knowing if I appreciated that he was less and less like Malkar all the time. It only meant that when he showed his true colours, I’d be less prepared for it. ‘Being a flame?’

Murtagh took a slow breath, I saw his nostrils flare, and he turned considering then. He even looked away, and my shoulders relaxed, freed from that gaze. I wanted to sit beside him again before the fire. Instead I stood near the table, my fingers playing with the corner of one of the books. When I realised it was the fragile treatise on bindings, I forced myself to stop.

‘Is it not like that, where you’re from?’ he said.

I almost told him that it wasn’t like that at all, but then considered Shannon, and all that I’d never truly learned. Shannon was my equal when we were out in public. But in the bedroom, the dynamics changed. But I never found that entirely easy either. We’d both been so young, and I carried so much of Malkar with me, wherever I went. It was a relief sometimes, to be among the claws of our fellow wizards, to verbally spar with Shannon and push him down again, make him realise that he would never have true authority over me, no matter how much he took my breath away.

Malkar was always in charge, always dominating something or someone. There was never a time when he didn’t expect utter obedience to his extreme authority.

With some horror, I realised I wanted Murtagh to decipher all of this for me, tell me what he wanted and leave me to follow his lead. I realised that he wasn’t giving me the illusion of choice like Malkar sometimes did, but genuine choice. But I was no better for myself than Malkar was, and Murtagh had no idea.

‘I regret I’ve given you a lot to think about,’ Murtagh said. ‘I can see that for myself. Has it ever been easy for you? Any of this?’

‘Sex is very easy,’ I said, my voice changing, turning into a purr near automatically. And Murtagh just stared at me like he was disappointed that I’d done it at all. A spike of venom rose in response.

‘Okay,’ he said, instead. ‘You said last night that you’d been trained to accept pain. Was that recent?’

I almost laughed. The coiling, vicious anger within demanded more than what I was getting, and I knew exactly what to say to gain the upper hand and put Murtagh on the back foot. I hesitated for less than a second.

‘Oh, unofficially, from about the age of eight. Officially though…’ I pretended to think about it, gaining no small satisfaction from watching the colour blanch from Murtagh’s skin. Goodness, he _was_ an innocent. ‘Official training started when I was eleven. I was in high demand by many tarquins by the age of twelve.’

Murtagh was holding himself very still, I wondered if he believed himself to look casual, or blank. I could see his shock, see his prim Corambin horror.

‘I don’t hate it, by the way,’ I said all-too-casually. ‘Pain, that is. But I’m not a true masochist. I cannot achieve release from pain alone. No matter how hard Lorenzo tried.’

I decided not to mention Malkar, because he had other tricks up his sleeve, ones that Murtagh couldn’t begin to dream of.

‘So if you’re concerned that I dislike all of it, simply because I said I was trained to it – that isn’t the case at all.’

I smiled at him, the same smile I reserved for Lord Stephen when I knew I was getting under his skin. Distantly, I had no real concept why I was doing this. Why I felt so determined to destabilise Murtagh, why I needed his pale shock after he’d been so kind to me the night before, in his tarquin way. He treated me beyond anything I could have imagined, and not all the tarquins in the Shining Tiger had been monsters. Even I knew he was a diamond among zircons and glass.

I was no diamond. And he could find someone better suited to what he wanted.

It was predictable, when he stood abruptly. His gaze on me was almost wary.

 _And,_ I thought, imagining – of all people – Mehitabel standing beside me, _I believe that’s your cue to exit stage right, darling._

‘I have to go,’ he said.

‘No,’ I cooed. ‘Do you? What a terrible shame.’

‘Felix,’ he said. The word was a reprimand, and I made sure my eyes and smile were warm.

‘Do you want me to fetch Walsh and see about getting you a new shirt? I can see you’ve already got your boots on. I regret that we’ve not been able to have a proper repast, but at least let me replace the shirt I ruined.’

Murtagh’s eyes flashed at me. I sensed he knew exactly how I’d manoeuvred him out of here. He walked over to me, stared up at me, and I pretended my heart wasn’t thundering just to have him standing so close.

‘You could have just asked me to leave,’ Murtagh said. He didn’t even raise his voice.

‘But I didn’t,’ I said. ‘I merely told you the truth. Isn’t that what you’ve been digging for, all along? I have a fair amount of it. None of this is bothering _me,_ Murtagh. If you think-’

He placed a hand on my chest like he had a right to, and I stared down at it in confusion before I remembered how he’d done this the night before. I realised what he was doing, and took a quick step back, masking my outrage.

But Murtagh would have felt it for himself. My racing heart.

‘I’m leaving,’ Murtagh said again, though he sounded less cold now. ‘I need to think.’

‘And the shirt?’

‘Kay will have spares.’

I followed Murtagh to the front door, where the wind was louder, even though the door was closed. I could feel it speeding through the tiny crack at the base. Sometimes when the sun was at just the right angle, it lit all the dust and sand and bits of grass that managed to sneak beneath, turning the entryway in our house to gold and glitter. Now, it was damp and dark.

‘You know,’ Murtagh said, placing his hand on the doorknob. ‘You can use your past as a weapon against me all you like, I’m more than familiar with the technique, even if I’m horrified at what you’ve experienced. Which, by the way, I’m allowed to be. But don’t bother telling yourself I don’t see how you cut yourself with your words too.’

Murtagh forced the door open, and the wind slammed into the lighthouse, reeking of salt and seaweed and the long, green grasses just beyond the stone. He turned to look back at me, and I hated how disappointed he looked, like a tarquin that expected better. I refused to quail before it, but I couldn’t banish the shame it stirred.

‘Have Walsh saddle my mare,’ Murtagh said. He opened his mouth to say something else, looked aside for a few seconds, and then shook his head like it wasn’t worth it. After one lingering glance in my direction, he closed the door and abruptly left me standing in my own foyer.

I almost went after him. No idea what I’d say or do. I told myself I wasn’t upset that he’d left, and I wasn’t disappointed in him, or ashamed of my own behaviour.

Instead I turned and walked down the corridor back to Walsh’s room, past the black doors – one leading to the labyrinth, the other leading to tools I didn’t know how to use – and summoned Walsh.


	6. Counsel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entire chapter is literally Murtagh getting served by two friends giving him a hard time for his life choices, because he left a submissive in the middle of subdrop. That’s it. The delay in updating is partly life stuff (the Australian fires have been hard, let me tell you), and partly that I had to do more worldbuilding/research with Murtagh now that he’s back in Corambis and I got laaaaazy, lol, but then these disasters called me back, and so here I am! :D

_Murtagh_

*

The Copse was in West Isserly, which was where most of the Corambin secret societies were – we all pretended not to know this – along with the bulk of its publishing houses, banks and research laboratories. I took a train from Pollidean station, leaving Wyatt to have a rare day to himself. It had been such a long time since I’d visited the Copse, he’d near argued with me about taking a carriage, or at least a fiacre, until his eyes had twitched at me and he succumbed with a sharp:

‘Whatever you like, Your Grace. Enjoy being one of the commoners.’

‘I shall, Wyatt, thank you,’ I said.

Wyatt grimaced after that, looked apologetic, and I went off to Murtagh station – pretending I had no idea why it was called that, and certainly not wanting anyone to remember that I was the Duke of it and everything else – and headed to Pollidean and West Isserly, where I was thankfully lesser known despite it all falling under Duchy of Murtagh. They cared less about me there, and talked about my father instead.

The buildings in West Isserly crowded together, some built with so many extensions they leaned towards each other like conspirators. Their wooden facades were painted in extraordinary colours, jade green and mauve, or pale robin’s egg blue with salmon. Everything about the town lauded eccentricity, and though there’d been attempts to ground it back into a less jarring style, the Corambins that called West Isserly home resented any taming. They had a habit of responding to letters that implored them to consider the ‘aesthetic effect’ of their colour schemes by finding even more garish colour combinations.

The Copse itself was a two storey building with a frontage of painted brick red, and a pale green that looked like a pea soup with too much milk or cream stirred into it. The black window frames always had their curtains drawn, the green lace jarring. The black, heavy double doors each held a knocker; one in the shape of a brass flame, the other in the shape of a brass spiral.

I knocked the flame as a matter of principle, but it didn’t much matter.

The door opened, and a young man dressed in simple black clothing – some shadow apprenticed to some flame, no doubt – squinted up at me.

‘Password?’

‘Has it changed in the last seven years?’ I said, voice droll. I’d forgotten this part.

‘Yes,’ the boy said. I saw the moment he realised who I was, and then saw the moment he tried to pretend that he hadn’t noticed who I was.

‘The _old_ password was ‘recumbent,’’ I said. ‘And this system was tedious back then, too. Just get Keane for me, will you? Is he in today?’

‘That’s not the password,’ the boy said.

‘You’re doing a marvellous job,’ I said, leaning forwards and staring down at him, and smiling a little when he shrunk backwards. ‘Manning the doors like you are. Keeping out the riff-raff. Now, I want you to look at me and tell me that I don’t have a right to see the man who was once a fellow commander. We fought at Desperen Field together, you know. Or is he at the Three Sprigs today?’

The youth’s cheeks pinked and he looked behind him nervously.

‘Oh, let him in, Thomas,’ Keane’s voice came gruffly. ‘He’ll just barge past you otherwise.’

Thomas stepped back and kept his eyes politely down, then closed the door as I entered. Keane was there in the large foyer by one of the bookshelves, adding some new manual or pamphlet. They had a library, and the foyer bookshelves held many treatises on how best to be a shadow, a flame, or some variant of each. The Copse took its approach to power and the giving and taking of it very seriously.

Keane’s plait of long, night-black hair was over his shoulder today as he turned to face me. His black eyes looked me over so quickly it would have been easy to miss. But then he approached and we embraced each other, slapping each other on the shoulders, and he laughed with a pleasure and familiarity I shared. It had been far too long and we had a camaraderie that had never soured.

We had, after all, fought side by side on Desperen Field and survived that hideous mess.

‘How’s the restaurant?’ I asked.

‘Three Sprigs is doing well!’ Keane said. ‘I’m retired now, I’m sort of – oh, what would you call it? – the one they call when everything goes to shit and the manager throws a tantrum. Otherwise I don’t need to be there and they siphon off some of the profits to me. _Lovely._ Thomas, would you fetch some refreshments and see us in the Gold Room?’

Thomas bowed neatly, and walked off towards the kitchen.

The Copse had the air of a dilapidated old dame that clung to her decorative accoutrements, but could not fight the passage of time. The Gold Room sounded fancier than it was. Aging golden wallpaper with a pattern of stylised trees and leaves surrounded a room of wooden furniture upholstered in red fabric with gold embroidery. Sexual acts between shadows and flames were banned here, so it was considered a neutral space, though no space was truly neutral between a shadow and a flame.

‘Thomas is very fine, is he yours?’ I asked.

‘No, he’s Gisela’s. But she’s out today, something about a new print-run, or some release of…something.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘I don’t pay much attention. She’s busier than ever, of late. Did you want to speak to her, too?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ I said. ‘I have a need for some counsel. She’s got a better touch with the damaged ones than you do.’

‘Rude and uncalled for,’ Keane said, sitting in an armchair and groaning softly at whatever pains dogged him in his old age. ‘Even if it is true. Listen, I do about as well with the damaged ones as anyone. And certainly a good sight better than you, seeing as you never take them on.’

‘Ah, well…’

‘Oh?’ Keane said, lifting his black eyebrows at me. ‘What’s this? A _retirement_ project?’

‘Ha. Ha.’

‘No, really? You’re not retired yet? Who are you going to give that Duchy to? Or do you just plan on ruling until you die and then leaving the rest to sort it out after you?’

‘I try very hard not to think about it,’ I said.

‘You have no children, my friend. You’re fucked. Ah, here’s Thomas with the tea. I’ll take mine as usual. If he hasn’t changed his tastes, Murtagh here likes his tea black. As his very soul.’

‘Yes, thank you,’ I said, laughing softly. ‘That’s exactly how I take it.’

‘I do have a good memory for these things.’

‘Commendable, really,’ I said.

Keane had a smile in his eyes, then he watched Thomas sharply. But Thomas acquitted himself well and unobtrusively went to stand near the door in case anything else was needed. After a shared look between Keane and myself, Keane waved him away.

‘You could retire,’ Keane said to me. ‘It’s enjoyable.’

‘I’m not _that_ old. And you’re still working here, you still own a restaurant. You’re just not in the military. You’ll never retire. I knew where you’d be.’

‘Doesn’t really feel like work, honestly. Business here moves along steadily. Two of the upstairs rooms are booked. We have back to back performances on Venerdy and Savato. We leave Domenica to the ones who might need to pray for their souls, you’ll well remember.’

I did remember. I missed the performances. A flame – or perhaps several – displaying their prowess. Sometimes an evening dedicated to training, so that skills might be experienced in a safer environment than on one’s own.

‘I wanted to ask you what you know about the tarquin-martyr situation in Marathat?’

‘Ah,’ Keane said, reaching out with his foot to hook it around the leg of an ottoman, before dragging it backwards to himself. He rested his feet on it and looked up at the ceiling. ‘There’s not many from Maratha here in Corambis, Murtagh. I can’t help but draw some conclusions about the reasons you might be asking.’

‘As long as you’re still discreet, you can do whatever you like with what I tell you.’

‘I am as silent as the grave, old friend,’ Keane said, picking up the end of his plait and smoothing his fingers over the wavy ends.

When we’d fought side by side, his hair hadn’t been nearly so long, but still long enough to get in his face and mouth, and often covered in the mud we’d churned up from fighting. I well remember how he had to spit it out, swinging his sword, cursing loudly that he was going to get it all shorn off when he got home again. He changed his tune as soon as we were away from Desperen Field.

‘Hmm, the Marathine system. Firstly, they don’t care about it as a philosophy the same way we do in Corambis. Gisela is the one who tried to chase up literature on it, years and years ago now, and aside from one pornographic story involving a man beating a teenager half to death with a baton and coming all over her near-corpse, there wasn’t much.’

I stared at him, and he grinned back at me.

‘What do you want to know? Marathat isn’t a country known for the exemplary treatment of its citizens, and it cares not at all for technological progression or for science. The Cabaline wizards in Melusine, through the Mirador, rule over everything alongside a cut-throat upper-class, and you know they still display their heretics on spikes or…burn them or…something or other. It’s a backwards nation, Murtagh, but there are sadists and masochists everywhere. They just pursue things in untethered ways. I’m certain that – like everywhere – sometimes it works out fine, sometimes it doesn’t, and the rest of the time it’s a disaster.’

I was glad that Felix and Mildmay weren’t here to hear Keane’s blunt assessment of a place that – at the very least, I knew Felix still loved and missed. But it did dovetail with Felix’s bitter assurances regarding how he’d been treated, on what it was to be a martyr or a tarquin, alongside the things I’d concluded for myself just by observing him.

‘It is what it is,’ Keane said, sober now. He reached for his cup of tea and sipped it, holding it in his hands. ‘The only other country I know that has cared to develop something of a code are the Norvenas. But given how people are treated there if such things are discovered, we can’t simply send for literature or ask to learn from them. We know from word of mouth that they care a great deal more for leather in their costuming, and less for masquerades. We don’t even know what terms they use for their shadows and flames.’

‘I see. Is my closet still here?’

‘It’s been _years,_ my good man,’ Keane exclaimed. As I opened my mouth, he smirked at me. ‘Yes, it’s all still here. Going to pick up some of your equipment, are you? Some of it won’t be sound. The store isn’t manned today, but you’re welcome to go through and take whatever you like. Just write it down in the book. Do you still charge to the same account?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Payment won’t be an issue.’

‘Never was, with you.’

We sat in silence for a while and I sipped the black tea; weaker than I preferred. Eventually I prodded Keane into talking about how the years had been treating him and it largely sounded like smooth sailing for him. His restaurant was successful and had attained many good reviews. The Copse was doing well, Keane’s greatest concern was not knowing who to give the control of it to when he became too old to oversee it as the Master Flame.

After that, it was war stories, and not thirty minutes after that I craved ale and felt the scar in my arm throbbing and thought that war stories seemed innocent enough when you started talking of them, but always ended in such bitter places.

‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ Keane said, sometime later when our conversation had turned to small talk, ‘that you’re getting more serious about a shadow. The potential was always there. I thought it might be Cateline, but I see it’s not to be! And the shadow is damaged at that? Murtagh, that’s not your forte. It never has been. Are you being careful?’

I smirked and shook my head, more at myself than the situation. No, I wasn’t being careful. Rather, things were turning disastrous and I needed to know whether this was something I had to pull out of now. I would seek out Gisela before the day was over. She’d know what to do. As the Mistress Flame at the Copse, she’d always known what to do.

‘At least you came back to us,’ Keane said softly. ‘It’s a good sign. How many times have you been with the shadow?’

‘I’ve seen him plenty, but in terms of engagements, only twice.’

‘And you’re already back here? Go that well, did it?’

‘The first time was perfect,’ I said. ‘Honestly, even the second time was. It’s the aftermath… And I was ill-prepared to learn of how things could be, elsewhere. I know Corambis is no pure place, but Lady help me, we still put child rapists and the purveyors of child prostitution in prison and execute them summarily.’

‘Ah, you do need to talk to Gisela,’ Keane said after a moment of thought. ‘I expect this isn’t the last we’ll be seeing of you, then. Almost thought you’d given it up, certainly on any serious level. I know you procured prostitutes, but it isn’t the same.’

‘It isn’t,’ I said.

‘And…a man, as well?’ Keane said tentatively, which made me think he knew it was either Mildmay or Felix. There weren’t that many who managed to make the harrowing journey through the mountains to get to us, after all.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I know you’ve had the odd night with men, but something more regular? It’s not as though Our Lady of the Mirrors is the smallest church in Corambis, and it _is_ just…a relatively short walk from Carey House, isn’t it?’

Keane made a pretence of looking at his nails, I stared at him levelly.

‘I mean,’ he continued. ‘It’s the largest church in Corambis, my good man. Constant Godolphin finds your soul utterly virtuous. And you can pass off fucking men here and there, but taking up something regular with a shadow no less…’

‘What do you want to know, Keane? That I’ve reconciled myself with the Holy Lady? Or what my plan is if the scandal gets out?’

‘Scandal is attached to those two in the first place,’ Keane said. ‘You know it is.’

‘They’re in _Grimglass.’_

‘But you’re in Esmer. He might be able to escape the scandal like just about everyone exiled to Grimglass, but you won’t. Do you think that…nephew of yours will try for the Duchy if this gets out?’

‘ _Julian?’_ I said, then burst out laughing. Julian, the aethereal I intended to lecture about the seemliness of getting about a tiny village to fuck any boy that would have him? 

‘That’s promising, at least,’ Keane deadpanned. ‘The Duchy sounds safe, after all.’

‘Holy Lady, _Julian_ as the Duke. That took fifteen years off my life. But…oh, he is the most suitable, isn’t he? It’s not worth thinking about. I hardly thought about it when he was the direct candidate, and he didn't want the position either. If it wasn't for Isobel... And Julian's as good as put away now, in Grimglass, he's not being raised to it anymore, is he? I’d best live for another three decades and see if he’s grown half a brain by then. At least a quarter.’

‘I mean, if you think about it, you became Duke before you had half a brain.’

‘Keane,’ I said. ‘I’d at least been to war. I had…something. Mettle.’

‘Yes, yes. Of course you did. And you were well known for your calm and sober wisdom on the battlefield. It’s not like anyone bothered to call you the _Dragon_ of Desperen Field because you mowed through so many people on your own, and…what did you do with that catapult again?’

‘Hush.’

‘No, no, I’m trying to remember. Bear with me, I’m so old now.’

‘Felix would like you.’

‘Oh, it’s the wizard is it? Smart. That’s smart of you. Holy Lady, Murtagh, have you taken leave of _all_ your senses? He’s _that_ good?’

I shrugged and finished my tea and Keane stared at me with a lively light in his black eyes.

‘Listen,’ Keane said. ‘Forget about him. Come down to the Copse one evening, you might find exactly what you’re looking for here. Cateline would know shadows as well. Though she’s not interested in you anymore. She has her own flame now.’

‘I’m aware, Keane. I do talk with her.’

‘More often than you talk with _me,’_ he said, but even his catty jealousy was mellow, like he was just prodding me to see what would happen. He’d always been that way. Terrifyingly direct on a battlefield, but that fire in his eyes which wanted to poke and see where the holes were. It made him a very competent flame. It was what made him recognise the un-nurtured instinct in me and bring it up in the first place.

It was how I’d ended up at the Copse, all those years ago.

‘In all seriousness, I wish you well with it,’ Keane said. ‘You, of all people, ‘no, no, I don’t want anything to do with the damaged ones. That’s too complicated. I’m a _Duke_ , for Lady’s sake!’ Ring any bells? Listen, I’ll lend you some of the books Gisela normally loans out on the issues you’re likely to stumble into. And if he’s from Marathine… you mentioned child prostitution, didn’t you? Yes, ah, there’s one book in particular I think she’d give you. But, not yet, not yet, we’ve just sat down.’

‘It’s been well over an hour.’

Keane smiled lazily at me, and then blinked up at the ceiling.

‘She’ll be working hard enough that if you treat her to lunch, she’ll give you whatever time you need. Now, tell me how it’s been, you old dog. You don’t come by, you don’t write.’

Keane laughed before I did, and I felt something warm and full in my chest, a sense of nostalgia for something that marriage and Dukedom and politics had stolen from me. But it was right here, and I was older now, and less precious about the potential scandal attached to these things. Maybe it was a mistake, certainly Keane seemed to think I was being very reckless, but, well…

…They didn’t call me the Dragon of Desperen Field because I was staid.

*

I found Gisela in the Kora publishing house doing a quality check, standing over a crate of newly published tomes on _An Abridged Catalogue of the Laws and By-laws in the Duchies of Corambis._

‘This looks dry,’ I said, and she turned and beamed as soon as she saw me.

‘Ferrand!’

I didn’t have to talk her into lunch, she fell into it with a burst of relieved laughter, turning to one of the other workers and exclaiming:

‘It’s the Duke of Murtagh! Serious business. He owns West Isserly, so you understand! I must go! I’ll be back in a couple of hours!’ Then, she grasped me with her short, brown, round fingers and said: ‘Three Sprigs! If we go there, I can bill it to Keane. He’ll hate me! I can’t wait to see his face.’

They acted like an old married couple, for all that they were two flames who had never been in a relationship.

The Three Sprigs had the feel of a seasoned restaurant. When I first went, ten years ago, the waiters had been nervous, the house manager uncertain, and though the food was delightful, there was a sense of tension and being watched to ensure that we – as the customers – were playing our parts perfectly too. Now, the staff were relaxed and everything moved like a well-oiled machine, it was a pleasure to be there.

‘The fish is otherworldly, get it,’ Gisela said, and having no qualms about what I ordered, I ended up with beautifully filleted fish in a bed of finely treated vegetables. ‘And now, tell me everything from the start.’

Our table was secluded, near surrounded by potted trees that had gained girth and canopy since I’d last seen them as tiny saplings in pots far too large. I looked around, making sure the waiters weren’t too close, then launched into my story.

I started from the moment I’d first met Felix and ended with the morass of what had happened in the lighthouse. I’d been carefully not thinking about it ever since. Something had clicked for me in Grimglass as I’d listened to Felix lash me with words. I was out of my depth and not so arrogant that I wouldn’t take advantage of wiser people than I in order to fix it.

Over and over again, whenever I tried to imagine him being trained to accept pain as a child, my brain shied away violently. It wasn’t as though I was completely naïve. Our youths ended up in wars far too early, why, even Kay was campaigning against the Usara at fourteen, and was a commander at fifteen after witnessing the death of his father. Idyllic lives were not available for all.

And yet my mind unhelpfully kept supplying me images of the scars on Felix’s back, the casualness with which Felix had dismissed being gang-raped in a ritual to restart the Clock of Eclipses all that time ago, the facts of his history. It was like hearing the beginning of a melody only to realise that all of the chords were dissonant and jangling.

Gisela ate from her plate of lavash, cheeses and cured meats, and listened. She expressed no surprise when she heard of Felix’s background, the scars, everything.

Finally, I petered off, feeling like a teenager with no true concept of the world, and Gisela like a mother before me.

‘Oh, you great tit,’ Gisela said, her husky voice weary. She picked up one of the slices of cheese, folded it in half, then ate it.

‘So should I find someone easier?’ I said, unsure what the censure was for.

‘Maybe _he_ should!’ she said, staring at me. I straightened, unsettled, but she only sighed. ‘Ferrand, you left him in the darkness, instead of illuminating a path for him back to the light. Your responsibility as a flame is not just the consumption you undertake for your desires – honestly, this is so basic, even the ones who have only been training for a _month_ know this – but the promise to offer a light to guide him by the next day. It sounds like you were so intent on digging deeper into his past for personal details that you kept him trapped in a state that left him terribly defensive.’

There were two phases of a flame’s actions, consumption and illumination. It was the most basic lesson, taught to me by word of mouth before I’d even visited the Copse. I lost most of my appetite when I realised that I’d treated Felix’s episode in the bath as a period of illumination when it had been anything but.

The next morning, I’d been merciless from the outset. I’d not even asked how he was physically faring, and when he turned me off attempts to enquire after him later, I should have…

I shouldn’t have kept at him the way that I had.

‘But his past…’ I said. ‘You don’t think this would have happened anyway?’

‘I don’t know,’ Gisela said, plucking up a bit of the cured sausage that I found far too spicy for my own palate. ‘If he was a broken wreck all the time, maybe. But, my dear, he is a Virtuer! He is an ex-Cabaline with a monstrous reputation behind him, yet impressed the Institution enough that they gave him a teaching post _after_ binding his magic, and when he gained his magic back, they made him a Virtuer! Holy Lady, they see _something_ in him that isn’t just, ‘woe, his past is so sad.’’

I drank the rest of the ale and gestured to the approaching waiter for another.

‘But,’ Gisela added, lifting her little finger to capture my attention, dark brown eyes troubled, ‘if it is all as you say, I don’t think being cooped up in that lighthouse is doing him any favours. Still, if that is so, you have even less of an excuse for what you did.’

‘Here I thought you’d tell me to cast my net elsewhere.’

‘Whyever would I do that? I understand the appeal of someone like him, Ferrand, I’m a flame too, remember? And I _am_ attracted to the ones who need, hm, a bit of extra care. But you’ve lived a life of illicit meetings in hotels for too many years, and I think you’ve forgotten that you have a broader responsibility to someone like Felix. And I think, as terrified of it as he is, he wants it, or wants you. It’s only that…now you are not only seeking to repair the damage that others have done to him…’

‘I have to repair the damage I inflicted too.’

‘And so,’ she agreed, reaching for some of the fish on my plate. I ended up putting the rest of the fillet on hers, and she beamed at me. ‘I cannot remember the last time you were so discombobulated. And by a shadow, at that? You did very well to seek some advice, Ferrand, I’m proud of you.’

I warmed beneath the praise and knew her shadows warmed even more. She could be so regal in her role as publisher, as teacher at the Copse, as a flame. But she was generous and jovial and kind, enough of it to balance her considerable cruelty when she was consuming a shadow, or ‘sacrificing them at the altar’ as she used to put it.

‘I have some more books to pass on to Kay,’ she added. ‘Do you want to see if I have anything for your Virtuer? He hasn’t put in any requests to me. We’re the leading non-fiction publisher in Corambis, Lady’s sake!’

‘Does he put in requests anywhere?’ I said. I thought back to his barren bookshelves with far too few books.

‘He’s making a Virtuer’s salary,’ she said speculatively, ‘but come to think of it, no, I’m not sure he’s tendering an interest to any of the publishers. We’d all send him our catalogues if he asked.’

‘Do you know if he interacts with anyone outside of the Institution? I know he sends letters to Virtuer Ashmead.’

And very likely that other student that he’d occasionally mentioned at Kay’s. Corbin? Cor… Corbie! Absurd name.

‘That’s all I know, but I haven’t been keeping my ear to the ground, and all of the hubbub died down as soon as he was cast away to that lonely little village.’

I ground my teeth together, frustrated. There was no easy fix, and I could see all too clearly how I’d made enough mistakes of my own. I picked up the fresh glass of ale and drank a third of it, careful now, because Isobel would string me up if I came home drunk in the evening.

‘I can see you wanting to tackle this like it’s a problem and you’re to bring the military or some Convocation verdict down upon it,’ Gisela said, and then she laughed. ‘Oh, Ferrand. It sounds like you’ve earned a shadow like the one you’ve found. It will bring you back to the Copse at any rate, and you’ve been too long away! We’ve missed you. Did you like Thomas?’

‘He seems young.’

‘We turned him away the first few times for that very reason,’ Gisela said, sighing, smiling to herself. ‘He’s twenty two, and I’ve had him for two years. It took some doing, but I learned why he needs to be what he is, and we’ll see what happens in a few more years.’

‘Ah, so…a transformative relationship?’

‘He suffers far less as a shadow at the Copse than in the life he had before. And you should see his freckles! Beautiful. He keeps me on my toes, which I enjoy. He seems meek, doesn’t he? But he has a sharp mind. Too sharp for what his family had planned for him. Now, show me the literature Keane gave to you.’

I let her rummage through my briefcase, even though to do so at the table was rude. No one much cared about us, we were too far from the rest of the lazy lunch crowd for it to matter. She clicked her tongue at certain titles, but also nodded decisively and closed the briefcase after five minutes.

‘ _Read_ them,’ she said, ‘before you see him again. Make notes. You’re not going to remember it all, and you’ve had no time to internalise any of it, and you’ve practiced none of it here at the Copse under supervision.’

She sighed.

‘Ferrand, this isn’t like you, though. The way you described yourself on that last day, you were petty…even defensive?’

‘I was defensive,’ I said, turning the empty glass of ale in my fingers. ‘He called me soft, accused me of being a shadow. As though to be caring as a flame is criminal.’

‘You wanted him to know that you could hold court as a peer to any of those tarquins that treated him poorly?’ Gisela said. ‘ _Ridiculous_. If he’s going to think you’re soft and criticise you for it, let him, it only shows how unused to it he is. I’m surprised at you, Ferrand. Normally you have better control of yourself. You know where the lines of discipline should be.’

‘Yes,’ I said pensively. ‘But I can’t remember the last time I felt so unsure of what I offered. He has a way of making you feel like you’re not up to par. But I suspect the yardstick he’s measuring me by is one of violence and brutality. Yet… It is a strange kind of inadequacy. I fear I rose to it, instead of rejecting it outright. But it’s the only yardstick he seems to have.’

Gisela just stared at me with pity and disappointment on her face, and I realised it wasn’t for Felix, but for me. She only shook her head and stared off.

‘You would have known this if you’d bothered to come and do research before you pursued him,’ she said, no longer the bright, bubbly personality of before, showing instead a more serious side that could make fellow flames quake. ‘You are like an animal that races ahead, chasing its quarry, without bothering to learn the animal at all. And flames are not _beasts._ The whole point of the Copse is to recognise the power we wield and master it. You are out of practice and it shows.’

‘I am,’ I said. I didn’t like how she chastened me, but I also knew I had no one to blame but myself. Felix was difficult when I’d last seen him, but it wasn’t as though I didn’t know his personality. And worse, I knew there was damage, so I wished to dig it all up and fix it. I wanted workarounds and bridges and easy strategies so I didn’t have to think carefully around him, so I could relax and not bother reflecting on my words or actions.

She took a deep breath, blew it out.

‘Will he have you back?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ I said, thinking back to the way he’d stared at me when I left. Desperate and hostile and pained all at once, like I’d been the one flaying him with words, not the other way around. I don’t know if he knew his expression, but I nearly went back.

‘More the fool him, I expect,’ she said, then smiled tiredly. ‘Ferrand, you are a very fine flame when you have a mind to be, but…’

‘Not always,’ I said. ‘I woke the next morning and didn’t even see what was right in front of me. I don’t know if I can help him at all.’

‘Perhaps…’ Gisela said delicately, ‘you need to read some of the literature, and then step back from your current paternalistic concept of ‘help.’ Let him _be_ , Ferrand. You can push him for information if the time is right, but otherwise accept him for what he is. Simply having you in his life is a form of retraining for him, without you doing anything more than being the flame I know you can be. If he wants to keep seeing you, he wants what you offer.’

‘Or maybe he is bereft of what he remembers, and is taking the next best thing,’ I said, surprised at both how shaken my confidence was, and how cynical I sounded. Gisela was right, I’d lost my way. Either after meeting him, or before. I really _was_ out of practice.

‘That may be true,’ Gisela said. ‘Why shouldn’t he miss it? Or some of it? It’s all he knows.’

 _He was a child…_ It was all I wanted to say, over and over. He was a child. A child. And upon that fault-line, everything broke apart in my mind. There was no military strategy to apply to this. In battles, the rare times we were able to directly rescue war-damaged children, we left them to other people. We didn’t fight those battles. No sword could do anything for that. I left my pity on the battlefield with them, and didn’t care to take it back with me.

‘Retraining can be simple and happens most organically in the background,’ Gisela continued, ‘not the foreground. That he’s already questioning you at so many turns indicates that he’s threatened by your way of doing things. You already lean into all of the barriers that he holds up to protect himself. I’m sure he has his sense of what is normal, and you walk into his life and obliterate it just by existing.’

‘But a flame is supposed to-’

‘Not burn the shadows away completely,’ Gisela chastened. ‘Darling. My darling, listen, he will offer up his darkness and you can illuminate it then. From what you’ve described, it’s already happening. And the sex sounds exquisite.’

‘I almost wish the Copse could see him,’ I said, thinking of the displays and performances sometimes held there.

‘Almost?’ Gisela said knowingly.

Yes, almost, but not enough. I wanted Felix for myself, in a way I couldn’t explain and made me skirt the edges of my own mind uneasily.

‘At any rate, acceptance isn’t your strong suit,’ Gisela said. ‘So it will be a bumpy ride for you both. Make use of us, that’s why we’re here, after all.’

I kept trying to turn myself off all of it. I could stop it all now, if I wanted to. I could go back to seeing him and Mildmay at Kay’s, I could let go of the _work_ of it. Keane wasn’t wrong, I could find someone easier, come back to the Copse and do lighter, easier training and find a well-suited and far less controversial shadow.

‘It’s not easy, is it?’ Gisela said, smiling warmly.

‘Easier if I do what Keane said, and let him go.’

‘That would be easier. And it’s not as though you’re full of free time. It never ends, does it?’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘I have four days in Esmer, and about twenty people to meet with in that period, five of who will want me to stay with them for at least five hours at a stretch. And then I’m travelling again to meet with some lieutenants to discuss the strategies we have in place at the borders. A favourite, given I’m no longer _at_ the borders and they look to me like I can solve everything when they are the ones that have the experience to do so. But anyway, Gisela, I grow tired of hearing my own voice. Tell me about Kora. How does it fare?’

‘Oh! We’ve gotten hold of some wonderful titles this year! But we had to replace one of our presses. What a _nightmare._ She was my favourite too. Bessie! What a good printer.’

‘You named…’

‘Darling, you get to name your horses, I should be able to name my printing presses when they’re working as hard as any warm-blood in the fields. It’s not just me. They _all_ called her Bessie.’

I believed her. As with Keane, I realised I had spent too long cut off from this side of my life. These people who let me ease back into their lives as though I’d never left, who kept my confidence and wanted me to develop myself as a person, instead of developing me as a commander, a lieutenant, a Duke.

Isobel didn’t much care for Isserly, given it was so close to Isser Chase and her entertainingly horrendous family. After a while, I just accepted the busy-ness that came with the name of Murtagh, and let it go. I still had friends, I had plenty of family, I had so much work that I sometimes missed the battlefield, which made for sorry days indeed.

But I missed the Copse, and Gisela and Keane, even seeing Cateline regularly. I missed people who cared for the theory of power, surrender, and interpersonal transformation, who talked of growth and damage and need as easily as others talked of strategy and moving men around on a battlefield. I hungered for it and I wanted to drag Felix into that world with me.

‘You’re all coal,’ Gisela said, the gentle words startling me out of my reverie. ‘You didn’t just leave him spiralling down, you put yourself out in the process. You poor boy.’

‘I don’t think it’s ever happened to me before,’ I said.

A phenomenon where flames could burn too chaotically, too brightly, and then doubt everything – themselves, their craft, the art of what it was to consume and nurture a shadow. I’d seen others go through it and grown impatient with them, though I stayed out of it. But I had no time for a flame that didn’t have the inner strength to keep their own counsel and integrity.

And there I was, lost, with no sense of where my integrity should even lie.

‘I have to talk to him,’ I said.

Stupidly, I remembered how he clung to me that night, during the bath. How tuned I’d been into the situation, and aware of myself and him with a brightness that left the afterimage of it burned in my vision. I remembered him pliant in the shower, talking with me, letting me ask my questions.

But even then… Even then I couldn’t resist pushing him too hard.

‘Does his magic intimidate you?’ Gisela asked.

‘No, frankly. It doesn’t. He’s never hurt me with it. I’ve never seen him hurt anyone with it. All I’ve seen has been in service to others.’

‘Do you talk to him about it?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Well, do you ask him about it? Do you chat about his magic?’

I stared at her, and she nodded to herself. ‘You see, Ferrand, he’s a person. I know it’s hard to believe, and yet that is what he is. He has interests. Let him speak of them sometimes. Maybe his magic does intimidate you.’

‘The _theory_ of it does. I’m not one for theory.’

‘Then let him explain it to you,’ she said. ‘Goodness, at least remind him sometimes that you’re not an arrogant know-it-all upper class snob _all_ the time.’

‘Ouch. You do understand, he’s also an upper-’

‘Oh, don’t,’ Gisela said sharply. ‘Just don’t. He was exiled from his homeland in Marathat, to Corambis, and then additionally exiled from Corambis to a lighthouse in short order and is now living on a Virtuer’s salary, which is not nothing, but _is_ paltry compared to whatever he had access to before. If you think that’s _anything_ comparable to where you are in your life, you’ve become a delusional little twit and everything you never wanted to become. Additionally, you told me yourself what you understand of the ugliness his upbringing. Tell me why that looks anything like yours?’

I stiffened in my chair. Each word hammered into me like individual nails. My ears burned. Gisela petted me gently on the hand.

‘It’s my job,’ she said. ‘It’s my job to remind you of reality, when you can’t do it. But I know it stings, darling, I’m sorry.’

Her shadows must simply fall before her, like being cut down with a scythe. And I’d seen her excoriate flames who had mis-stepped in the past. I knew she was being as kind as she could, while making sure I couldn’t escape the truth.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m grateful. I came here for your brand of wisdom. I think I treat it all too flippantly now.’

‘It happens. It’s happened to all of us. Even those of us who didn’t leave the fold. It just _happens,_ Ferrand. But we’re here for you. Always have been.’

I smiled at her, and she smiled back.

‘I think…’ she said, signalling to a waiter, ‘I want dessert. The cherry parfait, I doubt you’ve had it. Do you want to share?’

In the end, she ate most of it herself, and I found my mood muted as I made my way back to Esmer with a briefcase full of books, a flame’s equipment, and a need to set myself on the right path, though I had no idea what that path looked like.

After all of it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I just _saw_ him again, I’d feel better. So – with black-bound books to read sitting before me in my study that evening – I told Wyatt to organise another trip to Grimglass, three weeks from now. 


	7. Torn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spent like 4 hours trying to find the complete timeline for DOL and couldn’t find it, so Felix saying that he and Mildmay haven’t known each other for seven years yet is spitballing (I know two years passes between Virtu/Mirador, that The Mirador happens very quickly, and that Corambis takes over a year or so (because travelling, at the very least), and that I’ve written this as two years post Corambis SO who knows), and just, yeah, look, I…I tried.
> 
> Also this is turning into an actual Story (TM) so like, pfft, 9 chapters? More like 20. Sorry everyone.

_Felix_

*

The letter was on very fine cardstock – the kind I’d have been proud to use in the Mirador – the letterhead claiming the correspondence was from His Grace, the Duke of Murtagh, courtesy of Carey House.

But where the stationery was gracious, the letter itself was curt:

_Expect me._

A date and a time, and then a brief post-script telling me how best to get in touch if I didn’t wish to expect him at all. I turned the card over and over again, fidgeting, frustrated with the lure I felt towards him, already mentally composing a polite ‘I must decline’ letter, while imagining eagerly opening the door to Murtagh only to confront his disappointment.

For surely he was coming over to lecture me, or express his disappointment, or even mete out a punishment, and all three didn’t appeal. I behaved execrably that morning, and I was more than ready to go back to our irregular chance meetings at Kay’s house, behaving civilly, pretending at normalcy.

Life had gone back to normal. It was over. It hadn’t even begun. It was one weekend, brilliant sex and a disaster afterwards, as I lay bomb after bomb and watched mercilessly as he stepped into all of them. Goodness, I’d driven him away from the lighthouse in a shirt torn and bloody from my handiwork.

‘Bad news?’ Mildmay said from the couch, not even looking at me. I’d spent too long by the table, turning the card in my fingers. With Malkar not here to break my fingers for fidgeting, with the years stretching longer between the two of us, it became harder and harder from stopping myself from returning to my earliest childhood habits.

I opened my mouth, closed it, looked at the back of Mildmay’s head.

‘Two weeks from now,’ I said, then hesitated. ‘Murtagh’s coming.’

The tumult that ensued then was all internal. There was a time when I would have made the announcement and vanished, left everything to Mildmay’s imagination, not cared about the conclusions he came to. My personal life was nothing to do with him. But years had passed and I was desperate not to turn our bond back to bitterness. If I turned Murtagh away with my response, Mildmay wouldn’t have to look at me as though I could do better when he didn’t understand the situation at all.

‘What for?’ Mildmay said, sounding genuinely curious.

I bit back the ‘none of your business,’ but it was all I wanted to say for about thirty seconds. Long enough that Mildmay turned and looked at me, angled so that the scar across his mouth was concealed.

‘To visit me, actually,’ I said. ‘For the weekend. We shan’t be bothering you.’

Mildmay’s expression went from curious, to blank, to a very definite scowl that he wanted me to see.

‘The _Duke,’_ he said flatly.

Why had I come down here again? Ah, yes, food. I turned to the kitchen, folding the card and putting it in the pocket of my pants. I took one of the pears and bit into it over the sink. One thing that could be said about Grimglass, its fresh produce was often beyond reproach. I wasn’t sure I’d actually had a good apple until I’d reached this village at the end of the world.

‘Doesn’t seem wise,’ Mildmay said finally. ‘What if it gets out?’

‘Are you planning on telling everyone, then?’ I said, turning back to him and wiping pear juice off my mouth. Mildmay just stared at me, and I wished this was easier. It was supposed to be easier, wasn’t it? Or perhaps it wasn’t. Maybe he saw that this was a bad idea, that I shouldn’t be seeing him, and besides, surely Murtagh was only coming here to tell me how badly I’d behaved.

Maybe he wasn’t staying for the weekend after all.

But the card read like a tarquin’s card, the order of a tarquin to their martyr: _Expect me._

After he’d left, I’d pushed it all out of my head and buried everything I’d felt about that awful morning and the following awful days as I dove into my work.

‘How long have you and him been a thing?’ Mildmay said, and I stared down at the white, translucent flesh of the pear and had no idea how to answer _that_ truthfully.

‘Not long,’ I said.

Evidently the best way forward was lying.

‘What d’you wanna bet you’re lying to me?’ Mildmay said, sounding baffled now. ‘But when? S’not like you’ve had the opportunity.’

‘Then I’m not lying, am I?’ I said with forced, cutting brightness. I looked around the kitchen as I finished off the pear, trying to think of what else I wanted to eat. Mildmay made sure I ate something substantial most days, so it wasn’t something I had to bother with. Eating was one more detail so pedestrian I’d rather just not do it at all.

I cleaned my mouth on a dish towel, then walked back over to the rest of the mail. A letter from Virtuer Ashmead, _three_ from Corbie – either a problem with her thesis or a boy – and two for Mildmay. One envelope had a tiny little heart drawn in the corner. I rolled my eyes and walked over, handing them to him.

‘Your admirers,’ I said.

He looked abashed as he always did. He took the cards with clever fingers, and tucked them away like they’d never existed.

‘Why’ve you never told me before?’ Mildmay said. He didn’t look raring to start a fight, like I’d expected. But this felt just as dangerous. If I explained that I’d met Murtagh when I was working as a prostitute – literally before the Clock of Eclipses debacle, when I was frantically trying to make money to save Mildmay’s life – Mildmay wouldn’t like any of it. So far, Mildmay didn’t know Murtagh was a tarquin, and he didn’t know how we’d met. That was the way I wanted to keep it. Forever, if possible.

My heart knocked against my chest, and I remembered the way Murtagh walked up to me boldly that morning while I’d been cutting him with words, and just pressed his hand against my chest, staring up at me while he measured my fear.

‘I am not what you’d call ‘lucky in love,’’ I said, dry, self-deprecating, and it was true enough anyway. ‘Besides, it was nothing, really. It’s still nothing, given he has a wife and is only likely to visit on the rare occasion. You know how the Corambins are about all of this.’

‘Powers and saints, Amice suffers enough for it. He’s down at the church three or four times a week.’

I hadn’t known _that._ It infuriated me, too. The idea that someone’s purity with the Holy Lady was determined by who they loved was absurd.

‘But that means he ain’t gonna love you,’ Mildmay said, like he’d just realised it and didn’t like that either.

He’d already decided not to like any of it, I suspected I was going to hear about this again.

‘All to the better, don’t you think?’ I said airily as I walked towards the lift. ‘Just think of it like you and all your besotted women. Hm? A man has needs, doesn’t he?’

Mildmay said nothing to that and I realised as the pulley lift slowly shuttled me up to my generous cell of a room, that technically I could have waited three or four days to tell Mildmay anything at all. I could have said no to Murtagh, I could have at least _thought_ about it, and instead I’d committed myself to him in a matter of minutes.

‘Very well done,’ I muttered to myself, walking back to the desk and sighing as I stared at Grice’s handwriting.

Enough reports, tomes and journals to go through that I suspect I’d be looking through them for as long as he’d been writing them. I sat and pulled out the card, turning it and turning it.

Perhaps it was that I knew I deserved to be punished, after how I treated him. But I didn’t want it. His disappointment alone was crushing.

But I knew, I knew what was coming. I pressed the card into the table and stared at the wall and felt that dull, constant hum of the ocean as it pounded against the cliff and flowed into great caves and the labyrinth beneath us and powered the lighthouse.

I would weather the punishment, and we’d see whatever was left after it.

*

On Mercoledy, I made sure I was downstairs at mid-morning when Amice arrived with the delivery of goods and food for our larder and pantry. His black, curly hair was wind-swept, and he bit at his bottom lip – something Malkar used to chastise me for constantly – as he unpacked everything. I watched him from the table, turning a page in my book on geology to make it seem as though I was reading.

He was quieter than usual, withdrawn, which wasn’t like him at all.

‘Amice?’ I prompted.

‘Everything all right, Virtuer Harrowgate?’ Amice said to the cupboard.

‘Perfectly fine. And you?’

Amice tensed, then sighed explosively. ‘I’m doing fair, nothing to worry about.’

‘Is it Darne?’ I knew it wasn’t.

‘That pillock?’ Amice said, and he turned and looked at me with some of the good-naturedness I was used to. ‘He’s been making no trouble. Swear he’s getting scareder and scareder of Sir Brightmore.’

‘Scared, not scareder.’

I couldn’t help myself, even though I’d managed to almost completely quash the instinct around Mildmay. Malkar’s urge to correct any lower class breeding flowed out of my lips and tried to mould everyone around me. With Mildmay, I did it to constantly remind him of his status around me, to push him down. With the others… lately I wondered if I did it to try and protect them from someone who was long dead.

‘Of course, sorry, Virtuer Harrowgate. Scared. Sir Brightmore puts the fear of the Holy Lady into Darne, especially since you were attacked. Didn’t notice at first, because he’s such a blustery blowhard, isn’t he? But everything he does now is petty instead of real dangerous, and maybe he’s given up getting Grimglass house. Lady Pallister- er, Lady Brightmore that is, she was terrifying enough. But Sir Brightmore’s got that, you know, that _presence.’_

Kay certainly had a way of making it clear when he didn’t like something. He’d gone from remarkably passive in nature when I’d met him – after all, I’d met him chained, blind and despairing, by a dead, rotting man he still loved, displayed for all to mock and humiliate – but Grimglass had raised the warrior in him, given it direction and purpose.

‘That he does. All right, so everything with Darne is fine. Then, is it Julian? Are you upset with him?’

‘No more than usual,’ Amice said, then his shoulders slumped while he held a basket of apples. He placed them on the counter and stared at me. ‘It’s a useless love. It’s _useless._ I can’t do anything with it, and he’s with all them boys anyway, Virtuer Harrowgate, but it doesn’t matter how much I’m down at the church, nothing happens. I can’t get the sin out at all.’

‘Because it’s not a sin, Amice.’

‘No offence, Virtuer Harrowgate, but everyone says you’re kind of a heretic and don’t really understand from sin.’

Amice said it as apologetically as possible, but there was a light in his eyes that indicated he liked that about me. It was probably why he talked to me about Julian in the first place. That and really, anyone could see how much he loved Julian. Except Julian.

‘It’s very hard to offend me,’ I said, trying not to think about how often I felt slighted by Mildmay, Murtagh, Walsh, the weather, the lighthouse itself, and mere circumstance.

‘I wish you were right about it not being sin and all, but…’ Amice turned the apples in the basket with long-fingered hands and I thought Julian was a fool for not seeing what was right in front of him. ‘Before I wasn’t even trying to remove it, because I didn’t really want the feelings to go. But they’re painful now, seeing him get about town as he does, and the Holy Lady isn’t helping me. Maybe because I waited too long, and indulged the feelings, this is my punishment.’

‘If you really thought that, I don’t think you’d be here talking to me about it. After all, I’m a known heretic in these parts.’

‘I mean, not a _bad-_ Everyone’s very happy you’re here looking after the lighthouse.’

‘So long as I stay right here, yes?’

Amice grimaced. ‘The Palli- er, the Brightmores are always very happy to see you. Well, not Lady- She’s not always very happy to see anyone. Julian likes you, too! The rest of them are, you know… You could come to the village more! Maybe if they got used to you, like we have, they’d realise you just like reading and aren’t that strange after all.’

I almost laughed, because Amice was trying so very hard to be kind and polite, while I understood my situation perfectly. Amice must have seen something of my amusement, because he smiled after a moment.

‘I’m only saying, Virtuer Harrowgate, that people might always think you stand out, but you and Mildmay- er, Mister Foxe have been so good for the town.’

‘You can call him Mildmay,’ I said softly. ‘Especially if he’s asked you to.’

‘You just seem more fancy…like I should call him Mister Foxe around you. Where is he, anyway? He’s not down the village.’

‘He and Walsh are scything grass for the stables, but it’s entirely likely they’re just out there talking. They said they’d scythe grass yesterday and came back with blueberries from the woods. You can always look for them after this, if you’d like.’

‘I might, at that,’ Amice said, looking up at the ceiling. ‘Walsh always has good stories, and Mildmay too. I could listen to them for days and days.’

I had stories too. But most of the stories I used to tell in the Mirador – around what had once been my Cabaline brethren – centred on magic and all the things that Grimglass citizens were wary of. The rest of my stories weren’t very happy. I’m sure Mildmay could take a history like mine and spin it into something fascinating, even compellingly tragic if he wanted to. I didn’t care to.

‘You really think it’s not a sin, at all?’ Amice said. ‘Not even a little?’

‘Where I come from, it’s the act of fucking the same sex that’s a sin, the love is always pure. And that’s not heresy, that’s enshrined in holy law. Of course, I didn’t think much of that either.’

‘Right, right,’ Amice said, blinking those large, sad eyes as he thought it over. ‘Are you godless, Virtuer Harrowgate? Completely godless?’

I thought of every god that protected or needed labyrinths in their worship and shuddered.

‘Yes,’ I said firmly. ‘I am.’

Amice stared at me.

‘Er,’ he said, after a minute had passed. ‘I mean some of the villagers wonder, because- But maybe you just don’t tell them that? Does Sir Brightmore know?’

‘He does,’ I said.

‘So you don’t believe in any god,’ Amice said, and I tapped the table once with my finger, realising I hadn’t been clear enough.

‘I believe in them,’ I said. ‘Certainly, I’ve brushed up against some of the darker ones in my time, there is no denying their presence, even once they’re dead and gone. Whether you believe them to be archetypes, manifestations, deities or something else. They’re still _something._ But if you’re asking me if there’s any god I pray to for mercy, to be free from sin, or anything similar, then no, there is no god for me. The cost is too high. I fail to see what mercy you receive believing your love to be the root of sin, simply because Julian is a fellow boy.’

‘You know,’ Amice said slowly. ‘Constant Westmorlin would probably like to talk to you about this stuff sometimes.’

‘In order to convince me that I’m wrong?’

‘No, Constant Westmorlin is just that way. Likes the theory of it, always trying to get us to talk about stuff as kids, when just praying to the Holy Lady was enough, or I thought it was, anyway.’

‘Then could you not talk to him about the state of your soul?’

‘I don’t want him to know,’ Amice said, rubbing at his ears, and I realised they must have heated or flushed. ‘If he knows, he can never _unknow_ it. And I’m living in Grimglass forever. It’s my home.’

I was fascinated. I didn’t have much time for priests, Malkar had been staunchly areligious, decrying all religion in every form, and exploiting all he could from those who practiced it. I’d fallen away from that scathing judgement, Mildmay’s quiet spirituality wasn’t intrusive and I knew for a fact that he wasn’t stupid, and I understood enough now to know it gave something to the people who wanted or needed it. But I’d only met Constant Westmorlin three times. Twice at his church, and the first time when he came to visit Kay, bringing an overflowing wicker basket of courgettes and wearing a look of chagrin.

‘They’ve taken over again!’

It was the first thing I ever heard him say.

He seemed a fussy, sparrow-like man, with wire-rimmed spectacles, so tall and thin the stiff Grimglass breezes could have blown him away. But we’d never talked much. He’d never been rude to me – always perfectly civil – but I didn’t trust him. Priests were particularly good at offering civility with one hand and evangelism with the other. I wasn’t interested.

‘Why not talk to him about his thoughts on sin then?’ I prompted. ‘There are ways to talk about things indirectly, without ever mentioning what troubles you. And you’re of an age to be questioning your faith, worrying about your actions. But if he starts going on about how loving men is a sin…’

‘…I should…listen to him?’ Amice said, and then he half-smiled. ‘An’ you were going to tell me to leave him if he did, weren’t you?’

‘Well,’ I said, smiling at him. ‘Perhaps.’

‘An’ I wish you were right, but that’s only because it would make things easier for my soul. An easy way out.’

‘I see. I don’t think forcing yourself down to Our Lady of the White Waters three or four times a week is doing you any favours though, is it?’

‘How did you-?’ Then: ‘That Mildmay! You two put your heads together like old maids sometimes, don’t you? But, well, I suppose you’re right. It’s just making me miserabler.’

‘More miserable.’

‘Miserabler is a word,’ Amice said. ‘Everyone in town uses it.’

I winced.

‘Maybe it’s just not a word where _you_ come from,’ Amice continued, in that stubborn, fearless way that made me grateful for his company whenever he came and I happened to have time. He’d been scared of me at first, and then one day seemed to give it up as being a waste of his time. I couldn’t tell if that was sensible or foolish, but I liked it. There was a time when I would have rushed to make sure he stayed afraid.

‘An’ anyway,’ Amice said, sighing. ‘It don’t much matter. I can’t feel this way for him forever, because surely at some point I’ll get mad that he doesn’t notice me. Others do. I once went to Brigady-Wells for the weekend, and a couple of girls and even a lad noticed me. I don’t even know why I like him so, he’s so pompous and uppity sometimes. A right twat, at times, he is.’

I leaned back in my chair and watched him, and after a while he looked up in the sheer exasperation of someone who was used to trying to convince himself not to love someone. It was painfully familiar in its own fashion, only I’d never tried very hard to stop myself from loving Mildmay, if anything I’d tried harder to force him to…

Well, he loved me, just not in the way I’d hoped for, once.

‘Listen to me go on,’ Amice muttered. ‘I’m going to find the others. Oh, there’s some new pears, as you said you like them. They spoil so quick, they’re going to go to mush if they were canned, but they taste like sunshine. Enjoy your book, Virtuer Harrowgate, I’ll see you next Mercoledy.’

He waved to me, halfway to the door as he spoke, and then it opened – banged against the wall from the ocean winds with an ‘Ah! Fuck! Shit, _sorry!_ Sorry, Virtuer Harrowgate!’ – and closed behind him.

*

‘How’d it start?’ Mildmay said, Martedy evening, three days before Murtagh was due to arrive. He sat there, playing Hermit’s Pleasure with his cards, or some variation of it. He stared fixedly down at them, which was my first sign that he was trying to be delicate, and I appreciated that, but I couldn’t see how we weren’t going to end up arguing.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Murtagh,’ he said. ‘How’d it start?’

‘A few passing glances. I didn’t think they’d amount to anything, but they did.’

‘Kethe,’ Mildmay said. ‘You could _not_ lie about it, but suit yourself.’

‘I will, thank you.’

I pointedly put my legs up on the couch, even though he couldn’t see me doing it, and wasn’t likely to come and sit next to me anyway. The fire was low in the hearth, and I felt myself stuck between Grice’s notes about the sea upstairs, and the labyrinth he’d been obsessed with below us. And here, this strange space where Mildmay and I tried to learn what it meant to be brothers.

‘Just,’ Mildmay said, clearly not able to let it go. ‘You know, there ain’t been a ton of opportunities and I know you like your secrets – still about as useful as ballet shoes to a duck, I say – but this seems like one you’d let slip, s’long as it weren’t…’

‘As long as it _wasn’t_ what?’

‘Can’t see why you give a rat’s ass about it, unless it’s…’

Mildmay went silent, and I felt too tense to be comfortable in my pose of faux relaxation, but I couldn’t move.

‘You wouldn’t tell me how long ago it started, either,’ Mildmay said slowly.

‘I don’t see why you care so much,’ I said archly. ‘You’ve never before been so invested in who I fuck, or when, or _how._ Shall we all sit around the table on Savato, the three of us, and you can ask Murtagh what his favourite position is?’

I slunk further down the couch, until my back was cramped and my knees were bent, listening to myself. Mildmay would think I was fucking Murtagh, and I hated this tearing thing between myself, the truth, and wanting Mildmay to know it, and needing him to stay ignorant of all of it. Why he cared so much in the first place… Maybe he didn’t want me to sleep with Murtagh. Certainly my relationships had never gone well for anyone involved, perhaps he didn’t want the drama.

The sound of the chair moving, and I pushed my legs so that they were straight on the couch again, so that I was leaning against the armrest and as relaxed as I could appear. But Mildmay didn’t come over, and I didn’t peer over the cushion to see what he was doing.

‘Felix?’ Mildmay said, his voice younger, smaller. I closed my eyes, head dropping forward. Damn him and his mind, putting it together.

‘What?’ I tried to tell myself I didn’t snap.

‘Wasn’t when I was sick, was it?’

I should have lied to him. Let him believe we met sweetly, that I seduced Murtagh, that I certainly wasn’t hired to be dominated and fucked past exhaustion. And then I swung hard in the opposite direction and looked over the couch cushion, smiling at him.

‘The Althammara is a _lovely_ hotel,’ I said. ‘He was well worth it, I can assure you. And that payment, so _very_ generous.’

Mildmay looked sick and angry and tired all at once. ‘Don’t. Can’t _believe_ you. You ain’t never have to do shit like that again, and he’s comin’ _over?_ How much is he paying you? I’ve half a mind-’

‘It’s not like that,’ I said, seeing the way he worked himself up. The last thing we needed was to find out what exile lay beyond Grimglass, because Mildmay had murdered a Duke. ‘It’s been nothing at all for two years. He’s been extraordinarily respectful and kept his distance until recently, and I…’

I sunk down so that Mildmay couldn’t see me.

‘I enjoy his company,’ I said. ‘If you must know.’

‘I don’t like it,’ Mildmay said stubbornly. A dog with a bone had more give.

‘You don’t have to be here.’

Mildmay took a deep breath, exhaled it heavily. ‘Just wish you’d talked to me about it, you know. You’ve had septad and six chances to bring it up, right? You met him _years_ ago.’

‘Only two,’ I said, like that was no time at all. Mildmay and I hadn’t known each other for more than seven, yet.

I’d never liked talking about personal matters, but at some point after arriving at Grimglass, I’d come to loathe it. What was the point? What would it change? Mildmay’s sympathy was a balm, but it came with the price of having to talk about things I couldn’t fix, tragedies I had caused for myself and others. There was nothing I could do to undo being sent here, and no life I particularly wanted for myself that looked better than the one I had. It went from something that was difficult, to something that felt as useless as Amice trying to pray his love away.

‘Mildmay,’ I added, ‘you weren’t conscious at the time. By the time you were, the Clock of Eclipses was in the forefront of your mind and mine. After that, he and I behaved as though we’d met professionally and left it at that. As to everything now, it’s only been a few weeks. That’s all I want to say on the matter. You’re to be perfectly civil to him if you decide to stay in over the weekend. We’ll keep out of your way.’

‘You’re not sending me away,’ Mildmay said, faintly incredulous.

‘So long as you keep it to yourself, you can do whatever you like.’

I decided Grice’s notes and his constant, near poetic obsession with the sea, handwritten in a tangle that gave me a headache, was still more appealing than this. We weren’t arguing, but Mildmay was never going to come around to this – he didn’t even know Murtagh was a tarquin, and I hoped he never did – and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to keep seeing Murtagh. I stood, biting my tongue at the savage pull in my calf. I hadn’t realised how long I’d been tense for.

I walked over to the warm slate in front of the fireplace and stretched carefully, ignoring Mildmay’s worried green gaze. Once I’d gotten the worst of the tension out, I could mask the limp and I turned towards the lift.

‘Felix,’ Mildmay said. ‘You can tell me things. Anything. Never said I didn’t want to hear.’

My chest panged, and I hesitated, turning to look at him. ‘I know,’ I said.

‘I mean it. Whatever you like, you can tell me. Ain’t got no place to judge, you know how we are.’

‘I do.’

‘Ain’t gonna tell me shit, are you?’

‘Yes, well…’ I smiled, and turned back to the lift.

‘Felix,’ he said. ‘What changed? When did it change?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

He said nothing in response to that, and I didn’t want to discuss it. I knew what he was asking. When had we lost the comfort of our newfound closeness back in Corambis? Why was it so much harder to talk again? Were we doomed to go back to our old ways? Circling each other warily, watching each other for the ways we would be hurt, while hurting the other?

Yes. Yes, of course we were.

I had no hope to offer him, so I went upstairs, and got back to work.

*

I couldn’t understand why Murtagh wanted to come by on Savato morning. What was the point? We weren’t going to talk, certainly not about anything personal. I’d come to the conclusion that he wasn’t even here to stay the weekend. Perhaps he would mete out a punishment and ride back to Kay’s, the rest of the weekend unfurling before him, far less complicated and among the company of an entire village who stood quite in awe of him, except for Vanessa.

I even considered waiting for him in my room, naked and kneeling and penitent, but I was acutely aware of how he’d chastened me for trying to fellate him before he’d ordered me to. I wanted to do everything correctly, and I was at a loss as to what that might look like. With Malkar, only full abasement was likely to work, but even under his shackles, I’d chafed and was reckless and even rebellious.

I couldn’t see Murtagh wanting my complete abasement until he asked for it.

I had to wait, I had to worry, there was nothing I could offer except politeness, an apology.

I was frustrated by Savato morning. Sleep deserted me hours before dawn, and I paced my room and wondered why it mattered so much anyway. Goodness, if I was this desperate, I could just dye my hair and travel to Corambis and pay someone to fuck me.

Malkar’s voice, reminding me that I was a slut, a whore, that I needed it to survive, echoed around and through me until I felt that haunting that I knew was only an echo of the past. It wasn’t him, his rubies were firmly in the nullity, I’d burned him to death myself.

Eventually, near dawn, I stopped and sat back on the bed, shifting so that I could run my palm over the mangled calf. The scar tissue turned hard and rigid if I walked for too long, especially if I was tense, and I pressed my lips together as I pressed down on it, trying to coax it into suppleness.

When I heard the lift an hour after dawn, I stiffened, thinking Murtagh was early. Instead, Mildmay appeared, walked into my room and looked around curiously, because he hardly came up here. The bottom floors were his, and this and the final floor with its sea-searching light were mine. We’d not made it a firm rule, but he so rarely came up here.

‘Was just checking,’ Mildmay said cautiously. ‘You sure you ain’t need me to leave?’

‘If you don’t want to be here, you don’t have to be here.’

I thought back to all the times I’d not cared that he’d shared a common wall with Gideon and I, privy to all the sounds of the two of us fucking. And the times I had cared, I wanted him to listen, wanted him to know what he was missing out on.

‘You look like shit,’ Mildmay said. ‘I can send him away.’

A weak smile, I shook my head. ‘We won’t be in your way,’ I said. ‘I’m not even sure…’

‘What?’

‘He may not wish to stay,’ I said. ‘After all, he’s gotten to know me better now.’

Mildmay gave me that look, the one that told me what I said was nonsense even though we both knew it was true. The one that promised that even if everyone else left, he wouldn’t ever leave me.

‘Didn’t think you’d want anyone, after Gideon.’

It hurt like a blow, even though it was said neutrally, or I hoped it was. Mildmay must have seen the way my expression shifted, because his eyes widened.

‘Not that you ain’t- Kethe, I don’t mean you ain’t allowed to be with who you want.’

‘No, I understand,’ I said.

‘Not sure you do. Look, I’m not gonna give him a hard time, or you. Didn’t expect it, that’s all.’

It was an obvious olive branch. He was trying to be as careful about it as possible, and I was so glad in that moment that so many people in Grimglass appreciated him. He had friends, women, companions, peers, colleagues. Everything he swore he used to have in the Lower City, when he had to kill people to survive and was treated appallingly. At least the people here knew him, understood how gentle his heart was.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘You look worse than a rat that’s seen a starved cat, though. You ain’t sleeping?’

‘Not really.’

‘For how long?’

I shrugged. On and off, this started long before Murtagh had visited. No dream I’d ever had of the sea had been pleasant, and frequently I saw the Sim and the sea blending together, a black river pouring out into a black ocean, and Keeper there, calling my name. Waiting for me.

I could almost feel his hands around my neck, pushing me down into the water. I tried not to think about it, but there were always dreams there to remind me, slipping amongst the truedreams I was desperate to stop having.

Mildmay stayed long enough that I knew he wanted to talk about it, but I had nothing to say. He couldn’t change anything. After a while he sighed and stepped back into the lift.

‘There’s porridge if you want it,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’

The sound of the gears and the pulley as they worked, and Mildmay was gone. I went to the bathroom to shower, trying to compose an apology to Murtagh that I didn’t want to say at all.

*

Two hours before lunch, a little after when he said he’d arrive, Murtagh turned up. Walsh was there to show him in, and I heard them talking, Murtagh’s deep, warm, charming tones and Walsh’s reedy voice friendly and calling him Ferrand with easy familiarity. Mildmay sat at the kitchen table, reading a book that had been sent to him by The Association of True Engine’ers, titled: _Geomatics and Geodesy: Space, Gravity and Theory,_ by Neville Baccan.

I don’t know if he understood most of it, but I understood it to be highly theoretical and even controversial.

Murtagh walked in, carrying a decent sized travelling pack this time, which he settled down by the couch. He looked between myself and Mildmay, and where I had no idea how everything would go, he simply smiled like this was easy for him.

Maybe it was.

‘Mildmay! Is that one of the TATE’s publications? No idea how you’re getting through it.’

Mildmay nodded towards him, his face neutral instead of that threatening stone blankness. ‘Your Grace. How’s Carey House?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Murtagh said. ‘I’ve hardly spent any time there. Presumably Isobel’s keeping everything ship-shape, as always. And Felix, how are you?’

He walked straight up to me, a hand on my waist as he leaned up and kissed me on the cheek, no threat in his eyes and then he was two steps back from me, his hand no longer touching me, and already I was set adrift. I could feel Mildmay’s sharp gaze on the two of us.

‘It’s – by some miracle – a fair day today,’ Murtagh said happily. ‘Shall we go for a walk? I’d like to talk.’

‘I can leave,’ Mildmay said, standing abruptly.

‘No, no,’ Murtagh said, waving Mildmay down as he walked towards the hooks on the walls and took down my deep red travelling cloak, slinging it over his arm. ‘Not at all. Come on, Felix, the whole of Grimglass is pretending to be lovely, we should take stock of it. I believe it only happens once a year.’

I followed automatically, putting my boots on and baffled and trying to work out exactly what he wanted, and what this was leading to.

I didn’t expect the both of us – five minutes later – to be on one of the narrow grass paths, heading down towards the woods, the opposite direction of the cliffs and the sea. The breezes were mellow and lazy, the sun was bright but the day was still cold enough that I was grateful for the travelling cloak. I pulled it close around myself, and multiple methods of apologising piled up as I shrank at the idea of admitting how awful I’d been.

But there was nothing for it, I had to acknowledge it.

‘Murtagh,’ I said, ‘I-’

‘Call me Ferrand, in situations like this, remember?’ he said. He looked up at me, and I nodded, thinking that it was perhaps useless to predict him.

‘Ferrand, I want you to know how truly sorry I am for the way I behaved last time, I-’

A hand on my arm, and I stopped. Murtagh moved until he was facing me, and two hands rested on my upper arms and he studied me as though troubled.

‘Felix, I’m not sure you want to hear this, but you have nothing to apologise for. Though I appreciate it all the same. I’m the one who should be apologising to you. That morning did rather fall apart, didn’t it? I can assure you, it’s my fault, and I shall be working to rectify things to make sure matters don’t become so disastrous in the future.’

I stared at him, certain my body had forgotten how to move. Perhaps I’d forgotten how to breathe.

‘I beg your pardon?’ I whispered.

I was lost.

‘But…’ I said. ‘The things I said…’

‘You indicated repeatedly that you didn’t want to talk about anything personal, and I didn’t leave it be.’

‘But you are a tar- flame.’ _You can demand anything you want._

‘And you are a martyr and not a shadow. The languages look similar, but they’re not the same, are they? Come on, we’ll take a walk, though tell me if your leg can’t handle it and we’ll head back, or find a tree to sit under. I used to love the woods near the lighthouse, so indulge me, will you? You can serve me just as well later. I’m here for the weekend, though if you get sick of me, Kay will put me up.’

He turned and headed down towards the woods with a cheerful mien and a pace slower than his normal one, accommodating my injured calf, and I stared at him, curious, desperately confused and tentatively hopeful. I tried to pin everything I knew of him to the shape of Malkar, and Murtagh tore himself away from it, a similar shape, but so different all the same.

I followed him down to the woods, catching up easily, wondering if it was my imagination, the warmth I felt walking by his side.


	8. Pax

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New tag: Disordered eating. Tbh I've been writing Felix with disordered eating since the beginning, and I should've tagged for it earlier, apologies! 
> 
> I am having so much fun writing this story and these characters, like more than I could have imagined even when I started daydreaming about writing for this fandom. Thanks to all of you folks for making it so much fun as well? Like, just... it's been so great so far. :D

_Murtagh_

*

Felix had lost weight.

It was the first thing I noticed when I helped him into his travelling cloak, and I didn’t think it was arrogant to take some responsibility for it. In the spare moments I’d had, I read through the books and essays Gisela and Keane had recommended and in them, found explanations as to why damaged shadows acted the way they did, and saw in myself the incorrect strategies I’d used in my ignorance.

It was a relief to realise I’d not done everything wrong, but there wasn’t a tremendous amount of reassurance in being able to tell myself that – at the very least – I’d not checked _every_ box on how to behave badly with shadows who had experienced damage.

I’d also learned rather more than I ever cared to about the ways in which shadows could be damaged. One of Gisela’s books – which she had co-authored and made me wonder about the shadows she always had with her – featured anonymous case studies. It made for hard reading.

And yet none of it ever seemed quite as hard as what Felix had sketched out to me in short, harsh sentences.

In the end, I did what the books said to do, pushing it all aside and focusing on who I had in front of me. When the right situations presented themselves, I would have more of a use for what I’d learned, until then… until then, it wouldn’t hurt to get to know Felix.

‘Here,’ I said, pointing to a bush beneath the dappled shade of a young spruce, ‘the blueberries are ripe.’

‘Oh,’ Felix said, coming up behind me. We’d slowed down considerably when I realised his calf was giving him grief and he wasn’t going to tell me. ‘That must be where Mildmay and Walsh get them.’

The bush was untouched and I looked around. ‘They’re probably all over. Most of the kids think the lighthouse is haunted, so not many come to these woods. And besides, behind Grimglass they have more forest than anyone knows what to do with.’

Felix stood next to me, staring down at the clumps of powdery blue berries. He picked one off and stared at it like he’d never seen a berry in the wild before, then ate it as fussily as if he’d just plucked it off a plate.

‘Not many opportunities for foraging as a child?’ I said, then wondered if that was too personal. Felix’s blue-yellow gaze flicked to me as though he wasn’t sure either, and then he picked another berry.

‘None at all,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I saw meadows or fields until I was fourteen. At the time, I wasn’t in a state of mind to appreciate them.’

‘Ah,’ I said. I’d forgotten how tempting it was to push him for more answers. It was easy to swear to the pages of a book that I’d be more patient, but in person I heard the way his slightly breathless voice as he answered my questions and wanted to dig into him until he revealed all his secrets. ‘Is that one of the reasons you don’t often leave the lighthouse?’

‘I do go for walks,’ Felix said, and then his gaze turned distant. ‘Sometimes. Away from the sea, and there’s not really anywhere to go. I don’t think I’d know most of what I was looking at if I came here anyway. I’d probably assume the blueberries were poisonous.’

‘That’s better than just eating them without knowing,’ I said. And then, looking at the spruce and wondering if he’d find it too paternalistic, I pointed to it. ‘That’s a young newcomer’s spruce. About four or five years old.’

Felix’s eyes brightened, and he looked at it as though he’d just noticed it was a tree that wasn’t the same as every other tree around it.

‘Newcomer’s spruce?’

‘So named because you see them on the edges of forests, not really in the middle of them. But you’ll find them in open woodland. They’re good for building houses and cabins, so you won’t find many of the mature ones around here. They get tall though! Much taller than this.’

‘What about that?’ Felix said, pointing at a compact shrub with gnarled bark and deep green foliage.

‘That’s juniper. I don’t know what kind, there’s quite a few. Healers know more about those.’

‘And could I trouble you to tell me what that is?’ he pointed to a tree next to the juniper and I heard the faint teasing in his voice. But though he was treating me as though I was a library, he looked pleased.

‘No idea,’ I said.

‘Really?’

I held my hands up. ‘It’s blue beech.’

When Felix looked at me, it was with a bemused delight, as though he found something he’d not expected to find.

‘I should take you around wherever I go,’ Felix said. ‘You’re better than the books.’

‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘You’re just pointing at things I happen to know. I grew up with these woods, you wretch. Now, let’s find somewhere to sit. Once you’ve seen one part of the woods, the rest are nearly the same.’

Finding a patch of grass was easy enough and we ended up sheltered from the worst of the sea winds – though they really were gentle today – and warmed by the mid-morning sun. Felix lowered himself carefully, I thought about helping him, but I wanted to see how he moved. As he got down, I noticed two things. The first was that if he wasn’t specifically in his headspace as a shadow – or martyr, really – kneeling wasn’t easy for him, which meant when he masked it in a scene he was already starting from a point of hidden discomfort. The second was that his back didn’t seem to give him any problems at all. I didn’t think it did, given he’d had that horrendous treatment for adhesions, but it was good to be certain.

‘Well,’ Felix said. ‘You’ve displaced me from my lighthouse, now what are you going to do with me?’

‘Ask you how you’ve been.’

‘How very wicked of you,’ he said, but he didn’t look upset. Confused, perhaps. With the life he was used to, people probably courted him by taking him to fine restaurants, or perhaps theatre shows, or maybe even something to do with magic. Grimglass embraced the word rustic with such gusto that the only bakery in the village was run out of the back of Renly house and it had been that way since I was a child. ‘Will you tell me how you’ve been first?’

‘Busy,’ I said, then leaned back on my hands. Carefully, I eased the weight off my injured arm. Some things I couldn’t do as easily as I could as a child. ‘The peace we have with Caloxa is tentative and on their end, resentful. Some are genuinely trying for peace, but they want more of our men to deal with Usara, and that’s not much fun to figure out, if I’m honest.’

‘As far as I can see it, the Caloxans constantly losing their men to battles with the Usarans is what made it so easy to defeat them over and over again. So I can see why you’d be reluctant to assist them. If the Usarans are defeated, and peace-time is only tenuous, there’s nothing to stop them from building up their reserves and taking Corambis on again, stronger than ever.’

‘Yes. Though the death of Gerrard and Kay now living under my purview makes it less likely than ever. But still, I’m not in any hurry to throw our men away, or any more of the Caloxans. Usara is resistant to peace-talks, and they have…strange magic.’

I realised as I said it, that while it was one of the most common reasons for hating the Usarans, for Felix ‘strange magic’ probably didn’t mean the same thing.

‘Oh?’ he said. ‘What kind of magic do they have?’

‘A magic of hauntings, it’s generally frowned upon.’

‘And yet stolen, all the same,’ Felix murmured. ‘Your Titan Clock is no exemplary form of magic, and the Automatons are run on hauntings and sacrifices. Even the lighthouse was run partly by hauntings. Or at least it attracted them.’

I shuddered and thought back to Gisela asking me if I was spooked by Felix’s magic. As I warmed under the sun, I realised none of this was comfortable.

‘So!’ I said with false cheer. ‘The lighthouse is haunted after all.’

‘It was haunted,’ Felix said. ‘It’s not haunted anymore.’

I frowned at him. ‘Come again?’

‘About six months into living here, I let the dead go on their way, and now the light in the lighthouse is run entirely by the sea’s magic. Though I still think there’s some remnants left behind, but it will do.’

‘Wait, it really was haunted?’

I thought back to Clovis talking in a soft, fearful voice about the lighthouse, about the people that weren’t there and I couldn’t see, and swallowed thickly, not wanting to think about Clovis at all.

‘Is it so hard to believe?’ Felix said. ‘Grice was obsessed with the ghosts, though he was never able to talk to them.’

‘Poor Virtuer Grice,’ I said, sighing.

‘I’ve never met a man so obsessed with the sea.’

‘Well, you know the story, don’t you?’ I said. Felix shook his head, and I was surprised no one had told him. But then I realised that Kay wouldn’t have known the story, and Felix possibly wasn’t close enough to any of the older folk in the town who would pass it on. I frowned. It was really something he should know, but he wasn’t likely to find it in Grice’s notes.

‘When he was young, he came over on a boat from Ygres Sur,’ I said. ‘His family were fleeing some horror. There was a terrible storm. So bad it made one of the cliffs break away and fall into the sea, and it capsized their small boat. He lost his brother Harland overboard, and Harland drowned. Coty – Virtuer Grice – jumped in to save him, unable to swim himself, and his mother dragged him back and near had to knock him out to stop him from drowning to get to his already dead brother.’

‘Goodness,’ Felix said, staring at me.

‘They were twins,’ I said, after a hesitation. ‘Coty and Harland. As far as I know, Coty went to the Institution to study magic, but became obsessed with the sea and his brother’s spirit and eventually wasn’t sound enough to teach. So they sent him to the lighthouse, which was where he wanted to go anyway. The story goes that he tried again and again to summon the lost spirit of his brother, simply to be with him. The _legend_ goes that he summoned much more than his brother, and had to deal with that instead.’

‘There was no one by the name of Harland under the lighthouse,’ Felix said.

‘Wait, _under_ the lighthouse?’

‘There’s a labyrinth under the lighthouse. It’s the architectural thaumaturgy by which the light gathers its constant power. There’s caves everywhere beneath this cliff, as far as I can tell. I try very hard not to think about it all collapsing one day, and it’s not very heartening to know that another cliff has torn away.’

I stared at him, and Felix just ran his fingers through the grass, as though matters this serious weren’t all that important to him.

‘What are Grice’s notes like?’ I asked. ‘They looked nearly unreadable. Was he interested in anything other than ghosts?’

Felix pursed his lips in a way that – for once – looked entirely unselfconscious. He shifted until he was half-lying down on his side, his legs bent beneath him and braced with his forearm on the ground. I told myself not to lean forwards and push him onto his back, not to savage him right here in the woods, and I wished he knew how often I gave him my mercy.

‘He was like an arrow,’ Felix said thoughtfully, the breathless nature of his voice smoothing out, deepening. I wondered what he would have been like as a lecturer at the Institution. I know many of the Virtuers wished they could have kept him.

I mentally filed away a note to talk to Virtuer Ashmead at some point. If there was a general consensus that Felix was spending too much time in the lighthouse, perhaps something could be arranged.

‘Anything else that he studied, he studied it because he thought it might help him locate his brother,’ Felix said. ‘But he never referred to him by name. There’s no mention of a Harland, or a voyage by boat, or even drowning. He only ever talked about ‘certain ghosts’ and I had come to think he was haunted by a fantom, or something similar, like I had been.’

‘What were the other things he studied?’

Felix flashed a quick scowl at me. He looked so uncertain. I thought back to Gisela reminding me that Felix was a person, but now I wondered if Felix even trusted being seen like one. He played up to his archetypes.

‘You don’t want to know any of this,’ Felix said.

‘Then why would I ask?’ I said. ‘Exactly what kind of person do you think I am, Felix, that you think I’d ask you things I didn’t care about? Especially at a time like this, when we have this space to ourselves, and I could do anything I liked to you.’

Felix’s eyes widened and then he looked concertedly down at the grass for a second. But a moment later he was composed.

‘Grice was fascinated by tidal cycles and the moon. He measured them all meticulously, including the wildlife that might be more prominent at certain times of year, and season, and during certain tidal swells. I have never met someone so thorough and I’ve collated and rewritten some of his notes to make them – well – readable, and sent them off to the Institution. They must have been further dispersed, because the Armogan Guild sent me letters eagerly asking for anything else he might have. Little do they know that there’s years and years of it. I’m given to understand they can’t afford to send surveyors up here simply to spend day after day monitoring the weather, so Grice has saved them some money with his information.’

Felix squinted at me, as though checking to see whether I was still interested. I sensed, as well, that he would have felt vindicated if I’d appeared bored.

But it was fascinating to me that Grice was left up here – more of a legend than a man to so many – and was doing real work beyond pining for his brother. Also, I’d worked with the Armogan Guild myself to understand weather patterns in different areas to work out battle campaign effectiveness. It was a study that needed years and years of solid data that wasn’t composed of only villager and farmer anecdotes.

‘There are some terms I cannot find definitions for,’ Felix said. ‘Like ‘gleen’ and ‘haar.’ I do not think they’re misspellings.’

‘They’re not. A gleen is a burst of sunlight through clouds or heavy cloud-cover. And haar is the sea fog we get here, heavy enough that you can no longer see the horizon.’

‘Ah!’ Felix’s eyes brightened. ‘I’ll have to write those down. I’ve never seen so many terms for the weather. Some can be deduced, and some I’ve seen in other books, but others…like sea fret. Is that a choppy ocean?’

‘That’s the haar,’ I said, then laughed at his vexed expression. ‘It’s another term for it.’

‘Moonbroch?’

‘The halo of cloud that appears around the moon sometimes at night. Sailors think it heralds bad weather.’

‘Grice was obsessed with them. He seems to have thought of them as bad omens for more than just the weather, but at some point… At some point, clouds are just clouds.’

‘I’m surprised to hear that from you,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be reading symbolism and magic into everything?’

‘Goodness, _am_ I?’ Felix said, smiling dangerously at me. ‘What else am I supposed to be doing?’

‘Hmm,’ I said, accepting the faint goading and relaxing further. ‘Well, you’re supposed to have a cauldron that’s always bubbling away, filled with some kind of thick, greenish ooze.’

‘I see, I see,’ Felix said. ‘I should be taking notes. What else?’

‘You _should_ be taking notes, scamp. I suppose you should also have some…visible sign of magic around you all the time.’

‘Like this?’ Felix did something almost imperceptible with his hand, and about twenty glowing green flowers opened up in the air around us. They were bright, and where the dappled shade was strongest, they were even brighter. I stared at them. I’d seen them before, but never at a time when I could just study them.

They were surprisingly intricate. Many-petalled and vibrant.

‘Not all in the same colour,’ I said, recovering from my shock.

‘Ah, so fancier, I suppose.’ He did something else with his hand and some turned yellow, others turned pink. I laughed, I couldn’t help myself, and Felix looked privately pleased and almost shy.

‘You’re meant to have a familiar,’ I said.

‘Is that not witches?’ Felix said archly. ‘I feel as though witches are supposed to have familiars. We might have _fetches.’_

‘What’s a fetch?’

Felix blinked at me a few times, and I realised that I was having fun. This chore that I was supposed to be discharging to feel as though I wasn’t neglecting him, was the best time I’d had since seeing Gisela and Keane. It was enjoyable to sit here on a sunny day and just talk.

‘It’s a spectral double,’ Felix said. ‘It would look and talk like me, and can be sent to do my bidding, whatever that might be.’

‘You can _do_ that?’ I was horrified at the idea of it.

‘No,’ Felix said, laughing. ‘We’re talking about…’ He tilted his head suddenly. ‘Actually, I might be able to do it. Perhaps along the theory of sendings, or something similar. Maybe something tying in the _animus_ and anchoring it to the chest, or the breath, though…air magic is fickle, and the theory of it is woeful, but…it’s likely possible.’

‘How would you find out?’ I said. ‘If you could do it?’

‘Experiment,’ Felix said. ‘Truthfully, there’s many areas of magic I didn’t care to know about for a long time. Mildmay suggested a year ago that I might want to look into healing magic, but it… doesn’t appeal to me.’

‘It sounds useful.’

‘It does,’ Felix said. ‘I’ve never been much for useful magic, if I’m being quite honest.’

A self-deprecating smile followed, and I stared at him, curious and perplexed. Not useful? Not when he’d disabled one of the most terrifying and destructive Automatons that was about to annihilate untold numbers of people? Or when he saved all of us from the other Automaton in the Forest of Nauleverer? I had literally been only metres from him, and remembered well enough that all the other magician’s spells and attempts had simply bounced off the thing that tried to tear us and the train apart.

‘Your definition of usefulness, I contend, is the problem,’ I said.

Felix stared at me easily, coolly, like he’d accepted and dismissed my challenge. I wondered what it must be like for him now, to not be employed in any more of those heroics, to be pastured out like a lame horse. Maybe it wasn’t that he was never useful, but that he didn’t think he was useful now.

I thought of the Armogan Guild, how simply processing Grice’s data and passing it onto them would likely change the science of meteorology and our navy’s progress for years to come.

I remembered some of the readings Gisela had given to me. The most important thing would be…to find out what his definition of useless and useful actually was instead of trying to decipher it without his assistance. Why wasn’t his magic useful? I couldn’t bring myself to ask. It seemed too pushy when he was already being so forthcoming. Instead I looked up at the glowing, magical flowers around us. They hadn’t moved beyond their gentle swaying, they hadn’t dimmed nor shrunk in size.

‘Is that not hard for you?’ I said, gesturing to the flower-lights shining all around us. Felix looked up at them.

‘No,’ he said.

‘So you’re…a strong magician, then?’

‘The strongest in the Mirador,’ Felix said, looking up at the lights. ‘Possibly one of the strongest in the world, though not stronger than Malkar. Well. In the end I was stronger than him too.’

He said it easily, there was no arrogance in his words. He was possibly the strongest wizard in the world, and he was kept like a dangerous animal in the lighthouse to be let out when Corambis had need of him. But something else snagged my attention.

‘Malkar?’ I said.

His eyes flew to mine, a kind of horror there, and I realised he’d never expected to hear that name from my lips, even though he was the one who had given it to me.

I also knew that if I dared push now, the entire weekend would collapse in on itself. There was a violence of fear in his eyes before he masked it.

‘A dead man,’ Felix said. ‘But respected, while he was still alive.’

Every word chosen so carefully, made to sound so casual. Did he know the expression on his own face?

‘Virtuer Ashmead is quite in awe of you,’ I said, as though my heart didn’t pound in my desire to know more. But it was a mercy to me too. I wasn’t ready to pry. It made a dark mark in my mind, loud and clanging, and even the name itself was familiar as though I had heard it before. If he was a wizard, perhaps the Institution would have heard of him. I could possibly enquire privately without ever bothering Felix about it at all.

‘Is he?’ Felix said, but the words were rote. He gathered himself then, it was so visible it was nearly painful. I wanted to soothe him, but I couldn’t do more than lay next to him and pretend I didn’t notice. ‘He’s a kind man. He shows that face first, so you don’t see the razor sharp intellect behind it.’

‘My impression of him is the same,’ I said, exhaling in relief when Felix seemed to be letting go of whatever had caught him in its grip. ‘We’ve consulted with him before, especially on behalf of the Convocation. His advice has always been sound, even if we haven’t always taken it. Are you in touch with him?’

‘Yes,’ Felix said, and there, his shoulders unlocked. Talking about Virtuer Ashmead was safe. Or as safe as anything could be. ‘As busy as he is, he’s a prompt and generous correspondent.’

I nodded. After another couple of minutes, I removed my travelling cloak. Sheltered from the winds, the sun on our back and sides, I was beginning to overheat. Felix watched me, and then reached out and trailed his fingers along the material of my cloak, feeling it out. I wanted his hands on me too, but we had plenty of time.

‘You’re not cold?’ he said.

I shook my head and thought about the weight he’d lost and how thin and lean he’d been last time, too. It hadn’t occurred to me that he wasn’t eating properly, and Walsh was too old to keep up with cooking for the three of them. I was angry at myself. Why hadn’t I assigned them a housekeeper? Grimglass lighthouse was my land, my responsibility, and between the three of them – two had significant leg injuries that they’d never recover from and one was elderly – a housekeeper would help a great deal.

Another man might ask them permission, but I wasn’t about to. I would find someone suitable through Wyatt, and if Walsh or Mildmay or Felix dared protest, I would pull my weight as the Duke of Murtagh. Kay was its Warden, but he was only here because I needed somewhere safe for him, and I needed Grimglass to be wrenched away from Darne. Kay was cold enough to stand as a bulwark before Darne’s stubborn, relentless, erosive push to make Grimglass his.

I thought Felix would feel the need to talk, but instead he turned and lay on his back and stared up at the leaves, or the sky, or the scudding white clouds that held no rain within them. His hair stretched out behind him, red and wavy – he really did use something to tame it, I’d seen what it did when it dried naturally – and his eyes, one blue, one gold-yellow, took in the world with a dreamy interest that fascinated me.

‘Next time I’ll bring a picnic,’ I said.

Felix laughed, like it was a joke or some kind of excess indulgence, and not something we’d regularly done as children. Fond memories of our family coming up here – before Darne was anything more than a minor thorn – away from politics, when we were free to be children and could race along the edges of the sea cliffs, scaring all the nesting, squawking birds, giving no thought to what the world might bring as it continued to turn.

I sighed quietly as I thought of how much had changed since then. It left me uneasy, even troubled. There’d been wars, the Convocation, learning what it meant to care for a Duchy, and comparing that care to what Glimmering bought to his Duchy, and realising how hard I’d have to work.

There was a time, before I had a real concept of what it meant to be a Duke, but just after the military, where I was free to play about as a flame, to attend events and salons, even though the latter tired me unless they were held at the Copse.

I looked again at Felix, his eyelids half-closed now, the sun finally beginning to lull him, and I took myself to task. What in the Lady’s name was I doing? Wasting this opportunity? Lamenting the past was useless, I had this Virtuer here in front of me and I could do nearly anything I wanted to him.

‘I’m hungry,’ I said, standing. ‘I’m going to get some more blueberries. Do you want some?’

‘Mm,’ Felix said. It could have been agreement or acknowledgement. He seemed genuinely at peace. I wondered how much of it was an act, but his body was lax, his face reposed.

Somehow, after the name ‘Malkar’ had spilled from my lips, he’d not only gathered himself back together, but attempted to throw himself into whatever moment I’d tried to create for us. It was one of the many things that appealed so much about him.

I slid my hunting knife from my pocket as I went, folding the blade out from the handle. A gift from Isobel, less for hunting and more for self-defence. The number of enemies I had were fewer than in the past, but there were still people who thought to murder me or hold me hostage to ransom me back to my own damn Duchy. At any rate, the knife would be useful for cutting berries from the branch, instead of picking them, one by one.

I ended up cutting three bunches from their stems, birdsong all around me, including the tetchy call of a disturbed glasserine chiffchaff. I spotted it nearby, glaring at me and fluffing its almost translucent feathers.

‘Oh, stop,’ I said, as I walked away from the blueberry bush. Perhaps I should petition to get the bird renamed after Isobel.

It screeched for another five seconds before falling silent, then chirruped melodiously once I was far enough away that it felt safe.

I shook my head and returned to Felix. He had his arm bent so he could rest his head on his forearm, his palm up and fingers loosely curled. He opened one eye to look at me, then closed it again, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth as though he was stealing something by enjoying himself.

Absolutely charming.

I sat beside him, closer than before, and pulled my travelling cloak over so I could place the blueberries on it.

I took up one of the berries and placed it gently against his closed lips, my other fingers resting on his skin.

‘Open,’ I said.

He tensed, just a little, and then he opened his eyes to look at me, like he was aware of what I was doing and what my game was. But he opened his mouth all the same and I pushed the berry onto his tongue, never looking away from his gaze. When I withdrew my fingers, I let them rest just below his bottom lip.

He did nothing at first, then his mouth shifted and he bit down on the blueberry, swallowing a moment later.

‘Close your eyes, Felix,’ I said. ‘Let me feed you.’

His entire body responded to that, as though I’d hooked him on a line. He watched me for a few moments longer and then exhaled slowly, closing his eyes once more. He lay there under the dappled sun while I separated more berries from their tiny stems, leaving them in a pile.

I stretched out beside him and the next berry I drew over his top lip, from one corner to the next, before I pushed it inside. I could feel the way his breathing changed, turned shallow, lightly coasting over my fingertips.

With the next berry, his tongue darted out and licked across the pad of one finger, lingering there for a few seconds before withdrawing. I followed immediately and hungry for more, I pushed the berry deeper, sliding two fingers into his mouth and holding the berry still in his mouth. I pressed down, crushing the berry onto his tongue and ground my teeth together as his eyelashes – thickly lined with dark red lashes – fluttered.

‘They’re very ripe,’ I said, staring at Felix as I forced him to swallow around my fingers.

I didn’t withdraw my fingers straight away, but slowly stroked them over his tongue, hooked them onto his teeth, and then pulled them free. My fingers bore the stains from the blueberry, wet with his saliva.

‘Should I be calling you Sir?’ he said. He didn’t open his eyes, he looked as though he was caught in some spell, and I picked up another berry.

‘Do you want to?’

‘You collect names,’ Felix said, before his breathing hitched as I traced his mouth with the next small fruit. ‘Duke of Murtagh, Ferrand, Your Grace, Sir.’

‘Poor Felix, too confusing for you?’

‘No, Sir,’ he said, half-smiling, whether to me or to himself, I couldn’t tell.

I smiled and pressed the berry between his lips. This time I withdrew my fingers quickly and watched the flash of disappointment across his face. I already had the next one in his mouth before he’d swallowed the first, he shuddered.

‘You’re a delight,’ I said.

Felix’s eyes flashed open, and I slid my fingers as deep as I could. His throat closed involuntarily, a sharp spasm as his face creased, and then he turned it into a smooth swallow and stared up at me. He was going to be the death of me.

‘A new rule,’ I said, dragging my fingers through his mouth, moving them back and forth, feeling that hot, wet heat. It got wetter all the time around my fingers. I wanted my cock in there, but not now. That would come later. ‘You can call me Sir whenever we’re in private and you wish to, but the only place you _have_ to do it, is when we’re in your room together, or if I order you to under specific circumstances. Do you understand?’

Felix nodded, eyes checking mine, even as he swallowed around my fingers.

‘Good boy,’ I said.

His fingers twitched by his head.

‘Good boy,’ I said again, bending down to kiss the place where my fingers pressed into his mouth.

He moaned then, and as I kept my lips on his – barely moving – I saw him dragging his other hand through the grass.

I withdrew my fingers, replaced them with my tongue, and his legs bent, one of them pushing down. I was only kissing him. It was like a drug, he was so responsive.

A brief intrusion, remembering everything he’d said last time, how he’d illuminated his past in quick, scathing words designed only to get rid of me. And here he was, exquisitely sensitive to even the most tender overtures of control, and someone else – multiple people – had run roughshod over him so many times it was remarkable he could still be like this at all.

His tongue slicked hungrily along mine, the hand he’d had in the grass came up and grasped roughly at my shoulder. I didn’t think he’d dare to behave so boldly in his bedroom, so maybe he did understand that this was more relaxed, less strict. There were no rules here. He didn’t have to call me Sir. He didn’t even have to yield.

I tasted the sweetness of blueberries and the milder taste behind it that was just his mouth. I cupped his face with my hand and he listed into it, and when I pushed up further to tangle my fingers in his hair, he dug in harder at my shoulder, pulling me down, bruising my lips with his own.

I let go of his hair, reached blindly to the side of us and grabbed another two blueberries, pressing them between both of our lips, and the way his breath shook was delicious. I kept my tongue in his mouth, I crushed the berries down into his teeth with my fingers, and his back arched, his feet dragged across the ground.

When he went to tear his mouth away, I caught him by the jaw and kept him still, feeling the harsh gusts of breath from his nose as he tried to keep up with what I gave him.

A minute later, I withdrew only slightly and he tore his mouth away and panted, eyes wide, lips apart, and I could have fucked him right there in the woods.

But no, not yet. I’d spent too much time thinking about how I wanted this weekend to go, to ruin it like some teenager.

But I wasn’t above ruining him first. Just a little.

‘There,’ I said, my voice rougher than before. ‘Was that good, Felix?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ he breathed, the response reflexive. He turned back to face me, and his lips were reddened, swollen, and I thumbed them.

It was terrible of me, but I knew that Mildmay would know we’d done _something,_ and there was a dark satisfaction in me at the thought of it. I’d thought myself long past the need to stake a claim, especially given they were brothers, yet here I was acting like a teenager.

I leaned down to kiss him again, and he pressed up almost wildly. I gentled him down. I kept the kisses soft, I feathered my fingers through his hair, and I heard him breathing in frustration before he made a short, fractious noise. I continued to kiss him as I slid my hand between his legs and felt him hard through his pants.

‘I don’t plan on doing anything about this,’ I said over his mouth. ‘At least not now. So you’d best control yourself.’

I watched as he tried to calm his own breathing down. He was, really, so _good_ when he wanted to be.

And then I massaged my hand down into his cock just to watch his breath strangle in his throat and his eyes fly to mine, betrayed and lust-filled all the same.

‘Calm down, Felix,’ I said.

 _‘Fuck.’_ His voice far deeper than usual. I grinned at him and his eyes squeezed shut, his hips trembling as he tried not to buck up into my hand. I pressed harder and his hips arched up anyway.

‘Felix,’ I chastened.

 _‘Sir,’_ he breathed.

‘Am I being so unfair?’

He opened his mouth, dragged in a breath and didn’t answer, and I didn’t think I was being unfair at all. Not compared to all the other things I wished to do to him. But watching him try to contain his pleasure for me while I teased at the edges of it, felt as good as the sun on my skin.

I thought of how he’d tried to convince me he could handle anything I could dish out. More pain, more torture. How he’d been trained to it. And I wondered if anyone had ever bothered to train him to this, because he responded to this gentler control with an earnestness that was nothing like the refined control I saw when he was tied up and waiting for however he might be hurt.

I drew my hand away from between his legs slowly, and his thighs clamped together to keep it there. I laughed.

‘Calm down,’ I soothed, knowing the tone of voice was likely aggravating. I bent down to kiss him again. ‘Come on, deep breaths.’

He trembled, and he tried to take deep breaths, and when I slipped my tongue into his mouth again, he moaned in despair.

I withdrew a little. ‘Shh,’ I said. ‘There you go, you’re fine, Felix.’

He kept his eyes closed, his forehead creased as though he wasn’t sure why I would bother saying that at all. But a minute later he seemed to give it up, finally relaxing, his thighs unclenching around my wrist. His hand loosened on my shoulder, and then he was stroking it carefully, with a tenderness that felt like gratitude.

Another few minutes and he tilted his head back and sighed. I was close enough to him that my chest touched his shoulder, one hand on his chest, his heartrate finally slowing from the panic I was used to feeling from him.

‘I never expected you to apologise,’ Felix said then, his eyes still closed. ‘There was no reason for it. I don’t-’

I placed my fingers gently over his mouth and he stopped talking. Did he think he needed to appease me, because I didn’t hurt him? Or was he just telling me how he felt, because he was relaxed? Perhaps both.

‘I told you my reasons,’ I said. ‘But if you need to hear them again, I’ll say them again: I pushed you far too hard, too often, until you felt you had no other recourse with which to defend yourself in your own home.’

I moved my fingers away, he turned his head and looked at me. ‘I have no justification for behaving so poisonously, when you were only asking what most people would in that circumstance.’

He was determined to castigate himself and I couldn’t convince him in a day that he was being too hard on himself. The strength in him wouldn’t just protect him from others, it was what he used to hurt himself.

‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But I don’t need your justification. It’s clear, Felix, that if I’m not such a pushy bastard, we’re fine. Aren’t we?’

I rubbed my hand over his sternum, then trailed it upwards until I could stroke at a collarbone.

‘The problem isn’t you,’ Felix said. ‘It will happen again. Even with- Even Mildmay and I are rarely easy with each other.’

‘If I wanted easy, I would have looked for it,’ I said.

‘I was very easy when we first met,’ he said, then rolled his eyes. ‘The very heart of obedience. I’m nothing like it now, am I?’

‘You think I didn’t learn that for myself? You really think it put me off, to see how you were around Kay? The others? Holy Lady, I’ll never forget the time I visited and one of the men who intended to be a scholar-’

‘-Ah, Murchison.’

‘Yes,’ I said, laughing at Felix’s exasperation. ‘And he was there on Vanessa’s invitation, and he started going on like he knew a single thing about magic, and you tolerated it for about twenty minutes – Mildmay looking at you over and over again like you couldn’t believe you hadn’t said anything yet – and then he asked your opinion and you half-killed the man for the next ten minutes.’

Felix placed a hand over his face, shaking his head. ‘I missed it. I missed being able to do that.’

‘I think it was the first time I got a real glimpse of how well you held your own amongst your peers. You damn near murdered him at the dinner table, he was more done in than the spatchcock by the end. You think that didn’t increase my estimation of you?’

‘Maybe you would have liked me more, then, if you’d met me while I was at the Mirador. But I doubt it.’

‘I like you enough, Felix.’

His cheeks coloured and his gaze was soft. I didn’t get the sense that he was digging for compliments. He expected to be called beautiful, he expected to be lusted after, but I don’t think he expected to be liked.

‘Do you miss it?’ I said. ‘The Mirador?’

His expression turned troubled, he looked past me, instead of at me.

‘You do,’ I said.

‘I hate that I do. The place was poison, and for Mildmay it… It was wretched for him, and if it left anything of him unwounded, I carved it away myself.’

‘Were you a tarquin while at the Mirador?’

‘Yes and no,’ he said. I was glad this didn’t count as pushing him too hard, but I wasn’t going to dig any deeper. Not unless he volunteered the information or left the clues in his sentences. ‘You don’t want to know about any of that, Ferrand. There are plenty there who would think this life I’ve made for myself is far too good for all that I’ve done. But those idiots, they wouldn’t have their precious Virtu back again if it weren’t for me. I miss it. But I hate it, too.’

‘And Grimglass?’

‘Well, I hate it here as well.’

He said it easily, but a moment later he tensed and his eyes snapped back to mine. He hadn’t expected to say those words. I didn’t respond. There was no point. This life… It was good for Kay, Mildmay, even Julian. But anyone with half a brain could see that a quiet, pastoral life was choking the vibrancy out of Felix.

‘I don’t mean-’ Felix said abruptly. ‘The Virtuers were very kind to allow me to-’

I bent down and pressed my lips to his and his breath shivered against mine. I pulled back when he began to relax again. ‘You owe me no good feeling towards Grimglass, nor gratitude for living here.’

He swallowed and closed his eyes. ‘I’ve never told Mildmay. He’d find a way for us to leave. But I have never seen him- I have never seen him as he’s been here. It casts darker and darker shadows over the life he used to have. And he would return to it for me, and I would rather die.’

My chest hurt and I kissed him again. And where he’d touched me with gratitude before, I kissed him with gratitude now. I was sure he needed someone to talk to, but there was no reason it should be me, especially with how I’d pushed him last time. 

‘I don’t hate it, not…not always,’ Felix said on a sigh. I knew all too well what it was like to hate something and not hate it all at once, a familiar dissonance. ‘It’s the most peace I’ve had in years. It’s the most peace I’ve ever had.’

Felix stared up at the sky, then turned to face me.

‘I hate that too,’ he said heavily.

‘I know,’ I said, unable to resist kissing him again under the peaceful trees, the mellow sky that he hadn’t reconciled himself to. ‘I know.’


	9. Choices

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s notes:** Dubious consent. Tbh with a lack of safewords and Murtagh not even using something like the RACK system, this is always going to be dubious consent, but I’m flagging it here because Felix’s headspace is…very fragile. (I promise it gets better eventually).
> 
> (Also please bear with the Mildmay and Felix friction, I will do something with it, I love them, but I also love when they’re at odds with each other x.x).

Shannon Teverius once took me on a picnic to one of the farms in Melusine that leased a small lawn to those who could afford it and didn’t wish to go beyond the walls. At the time, I remembered noticing each and every rat running along the edges of our green grass, watching us with their bright eyes, staring hungrily at our food. I remembered living with Keeper and the others as a child, having to fight the rats to keep my blankets to myself. I didn’t find the picnic as relaxing and picturesque as Shannon wanted me to.

Later, I sucked his cock beneath a shrunken, twisted linden tree, which I concluded was his ultimate purpose for the jaunt anyway. He’d seemed scandalised and pleased that I was so willing to fellate him ‘in public’ even though the sickly grassed square was private, and the only ones watching were the rats.

But I couldn’t see the rats here in the Grimglass woods, though I knew they were there. The lawn wasn’t manicured, but a combination of wild grasses and groundcovers cropped by wild animals I still didn’t know most of the names of, despite the identification books I’d procured.

If anyone had ever told me that it was possible to spend hours outside, under the sun and dappled shade of trees, and not be bored witless, I wouldn’t have believed them unless they’d added that fucking would be involved. But aside from the kissing and the teasing, Murtagh only seemed to want to talk. I waited for traps, none came.

I expected him to take me back to the lighthouse after an hour, another hour, and then by the time it was mid-afternoon – after another slow walk – I was back to laying down on the ground. I learned that it was possible to order books from catalogues directly from publishers, a great deal more about the Caloxa-Corambis conflict – or the Southern-Northern Corambis conflict depending on how Murtagh was talking about it – and whenever I pointed at a new plant, Murtagh almost always knew what it was.

The weather began to cool as the sun moved over us in the sky, Murtagh suggested it was time to head back. I pushed myself up, stilling as my calf seized, holding back a hiss.

‘Stop,’ Murtagh said. ‘Here, let me see to it first.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

But he’d already pushed up and crawled over to me on hands and knees like he wasn’t a Duke or tarquin. He pushed my coat aside perfunctorily and then slid his hands lightly over my scarred leg, thumbs on my shin and fingers curving below. Even through my pants, I could feel the knowing way his fingers searched.

‘Holy Lady,’ he muttered. ‘Felix, how do you walk when it’s this bad?’

‘I stretch it out,’ I said, staring at him. Besides, it was nothing compared to how bad Mildmay’s scar was on his thigh. This was nothing at all.

When I’d realised how badly I’d hurt myself after exorcising the labyrinth – days after Mildmay had called me stupid and everything else while trying to press upon me that I was never to go into the labyrinth again – I’d also realised that my injury was so minor compared to his.

Even when I became more considerate, I’d never really considered how bad it was for him all the time, let alone how it would have been when I’d treated him cruelly. Never waiting for him. Sending him up and down stairs. And even though I now sometimes massaged his thigh and tried to make sure he was as well with the injury as possible, it felt hypocritical and wrong to draw attention to what I’d done to myself in turn. After all, it was what I’d done to myself.

‘Here,’ Murtagh said. ‘Do you massage the scar?’

I nodded. But he was moving up to the inside of my knee, where the scar tapered off.

‘This is where the worst of it starts,’ he said, looking down at it with such fierce concentration that I felt like a war campaign he was trying to decipher. There, behind my knee, he dug his fingers into the tender space and my whole body locked up, pain radiating up my thigh, down to the arch of my foot. I raised a hand, ready to shove him away, but stayed myself at the last moment. I was used to enduring pain, he was obviously trying to help, but it was like he’d shoved a knife into a nerve.

‘I know,’ he said, not quite soothing. ‘If you focus here, pain in the ass that it is, it should have a cumulative effect over time.’

Murtagh’s fingers were working into places that felt like bone, but as he slowly worried at the hard lumps, I realised it was muscle and closed my eyes, feeling light-headed. It was true. Even though the pain was horrendous, as he worked, my calf began to ease away from its tension. Even my toes felt less frozen.

‘What physician-practicioner did you see for this?’ Murtagh said.

‘Hm? Oh, I don’t know. I wasn’t conscious at the time. I don’t remember who did the stitches.’

I hadn’t asked Mildmay, either. In the first few days, I’d only been half-conscious, fighting through nightmares and truedreams and more, barely cognisant of Mildmay’s concerned, desperate, frightened face, and Walsh’s face behind him, neutral and hard to read because of it. By the time I’d felt well enough to ask, Mildmay figured out what I’d done. The blowout that followed was horrendous.

He’d not been that bad since I’d tried to give myself to the St. Grainne river. But this time I hadn’t been trying to die, and the shock of Mildmay’s vituperative, vehement attack – which had lasted so long despite my trying to pacify him – cowed me. I avoided mentioning my injury at all. The anger that I used to rely on, the righteous defence I had that I could do what I liked when it concerned magic and it was no one else’s business, it deserted me. Here in Grimglass, Mildmay made it clear that I was no longer useful to anyone as a wizard, and more likely to die because of it, judging by my actions.

I knew he’d not intended it to be harmful. My magic seemed to be a catalyst for so much that was terrible for the two of us. But for the first time in my life he treated my ‘hocus stuff’ not just with suspicion, but with outright fury. A thing I trifled with, because I didn’t care enough about myself to stay by his side. His words rattled in my head for weeks after, a loud, strange clamour.

‘After,’ Murtagh said, still looking down at my leg as though it held some secret he was determined to free.

‘No one,’ I said.

His hands slowed. He looked up at me with his amber gaze, frowning. ‘What about the stitches?’

‘I removed them myself.’

His eyes narrowed for a brief second.

‘What was a physician-practicioner supposed to have done?’ I said finally.

Was there some regime of care I wasn’t aware of? The damage had been done. The skin healed. I didn’t want Mildmay seeing the extent of the injury or its scarring after he’d been so clearly wounded finding me half-dead in the first place. So I’d used a small pocket knife to cut all the stitches myself, sliding them one by one through my skin, twenty in all. Where the wound had infected, the skin pulled away a little, the scar in those places no longer neat, but stretched and thin. The whole scar was still reddened, taking a deplorable amount of time to pale.

Mildmay had been shocked when he learned I removed the stitches myself, but he’d also seemed happy to put the incident behind us. After that I worked up in my room, and he did whatever it was that he did, and he became happier when I seemed to no longer put myself in danger.

Though I still maintain – at least only to myself, and only sometimes – that I would have been in no danger at all if I’d been allowed to simply sink down onto a couch, instead of tripping across the large, jagged pieces of shorn metal around the hall.

‘He would advise you of stretches you should be doing,’ Murtagh said, ‘at the very least. The rehabilitation… What are you trying to do? Pretend it doesn’t exist? This is a serious injury. If you knew how much work I’d had to do to keep my arm limber and functional after Desperen.’

‘This isn’t like that,’ I said. He looked at me, I sighed. ‘What’s done is done.’

Murtagh looked like he wanted to push, but he subsided, more of the generosity I hadn’t expected. Instead he worked quietly behind my knee until the sharpness of the pain turned into an ache. His fingers moved to the top of my calf, checking the muscles there, and then skipped the bulk of the scar and slid between my boots and my ankle, testing.

‘That should be a little better,’ he said. ‘Do you want to try standing?’

I had been fine to try standing even before he looked over my leg. But I stood carefully, surprised at how limber it felt. Not fixed, not healed, still painful, but not like it was going to seize for no good reason. I looked at him in surprise. He smiled at me and though he looked satisfied, he wasn’t smug, and I’d gained an idea of where to massage my own muscle to help the calf.

As we walked back to the lighthouse – Murtagh walking slower than I was – I looked towards the cliffs helplessly.

His story about the twins, Coty and Harland Grice, bothered me. Some of Grice’s notes began to make sense, but for someone so obsessed with his twin, why did he never write explicit notes about him? Were there notebooks I was missing? Did he destroy the evidence? And _twins_. Alchemically significant. If he’d been trying to summon Coty’s spirit over and over again, what had resulted? Grice was relatively powerful, especially in matters of the sea and water magic, and I had no doubt that Coty’s spirit wasn’t laid to rest, dying as violently as he had.

But there hadn’t been any signs of a distressed family member or sibling in the labyrinth.

I thought of all the sea caves around us, under us, and shuddered at the image of a skeleton wrecked on the rocks, alone and waiting to be found.

But Grice explored the sea caves, hadn’t he? There were logs and maps. If I was at all inclined, I could go and explore them myself. The idea left me cold.

I heard the waves all the time, I’d been in boats on it, I could handle seeing it from a distance at the top of the lighthouse, but I didn’t want anything to do with it. Even the labyrinth beneath the lighthouse – beautiful and functional as it was – had indications all around that it flooded at high tide. I felt, always, that I was somehow far above the world here at Grimglass, but also only ever seconds away from sinking back into some primordial ooze of salt water as it reclaimed the land.

I fussed at my hair as we got closer to the lighthouse, and Murtagh looked over me indulgently, eyes moving from my hair to my lips.

When we walked through the main entrance, I could smell a hearty stew, the kind that Walsh made, that felt strangely nostalgic to eat even though I couldn’t ever remember eating stews like that as a child. Mildmay was reading on the couch, and Murtagh took my travelling cloak and hung it up. Murtagh did it so easily, it took me far too long to remember that I was perfectly capable of removing my own coat. It wasn’t anything like being attended to by a servant. It was proprietary, as though I was his to see to, like a horse he was stabling.

It shamed me that I liked it.

‘A different book, I see,’ Murtagh said to Mildmay as he walked into the living area.

Mildmay gave a grunt of acknowledgement, but that was it. However, as I walked into the living area behind Murtagh, he lowered his book and studied me. When his eyes went to my lips, his face turned curiously flat, and my fingers went to my lower lip and I realised with a shock they must have looked bruised from all the kissing. I dropped my hand, but Mildmay had already raised his book again, blocking me out.

I felt strange, like I’d been caught out, and then I was annoyed. It wasn’t as though he didn’t come home with his hair in disarray, or love bites on his neck, or a button missing from a shirt.

‘Do you want any stew, Mildmay?’ Murtagh said.

‘Had some,’ Mildmay said.

Murtagh was serving us both a bowl each, reaching for the bread and readily cutting new slices, hunting around for the butter and finding it before I’d even thought to open my mouth to tell him where it was.

So we ended up at the table and it was hideously awkward with Mildmay there, but he turned pages at the pace I was used to, which meant he was reading at least and not pretending to.

I peeled the crust off the bread and dipped it into the stew and watched as Murtagh dug into our humble fare with enthusiasm. But then, he was used to these woods. And he was used to battle. So while I fretted about whether the food was good enough, I realised he didn’t care.

I had to give Murtagh credit, he did an excellent job making small talk given I was reluctant to speak too freely in case I revealed the true tarquin-martyr nature of our relationship to Mildmay. Meanwhile Mildmay was concertedly reading his book. Between small mouthfuls of stew, I ended up talking more about Kay, the improvements that were being made to the lighthouse, but the truth was I knew less about Kay and the lighthouse than Mildmay. I felt like Mildmay was listening in, waiting to correct me if I got anything wrong, a strange feeling, but he felt more free to do it these days, and I was more likely to be wrong about annemer matters.

‘How often do you go down to the village?’ Murtagh said. The question was innocent enough, but I felt as though I’d been put on the spot.

‘Oh, I make it down every now and then.’

‘Take pity on me,’ Murtagh said, ‘I have no idea what ‘now and then’ means. Once a week? Every two weeks?’

I turned and looked at the couch where Mildmay was reading. I liked visiting Kay well enough, but Kay and Mildmay were fast friends, and while Kay never made me feel as though I was intruding, I was still an intruder on the nature of their friendship. I knew it was never as deep when I was there. Vanessa sometimes stared pointedly at the tattoos on my hands and forearms, though she was never rude about my being a wizard, I sometimes wondered if I was too much of a ‘warlock’ for her tastes.

I wondered if Mildmay had ever talked about the obligation d’ame while I wasn’t there. For his own sake, I hoped he would. For mine, I hoped he never did.

‘Once a month or so,’ I said.

Murtagh had a look on his face like he knew it was less ‘once a month’ and more ‘or so.’ But blessedly, he let it drop. I managed half of the stew and couldn’t make myself eat more. I wasn’t hungry to begin with, and after a day that had seemed surreally pleasant, reality was creeping back in.

Murtagh took my half-finished bowl and ate the rest, and I watched, amused, while he talked about scouting locations for a new train station.

Then, deftly, he announced that it was time to retire and practically chaperoned me away as though he was used to dealing with incredibly uncomfortable situations like a head of house at a restaurant. My last uncertain glimpse of Mildmay was a glimpse of the open book he had before his face.

Upstairs, I said I needed to shower and half-expected Murtagh to follow. He didn’t, and I took the moment of peace for what it was, strangely more nervous than I’d been the last time, as though knots inside me were tightening, waiting for whatever he had planned. I didn’t deliberately take too long – my instincts not to make a client angry by hedging before a performance had been beaten into me for a long time – but nor did I rush.

Would there be a price to pay for the peace he’d given me?

Worse still, I felt as though my guards had been broken apart, and yet he’d done nothing today. Nothing at all. Every time I expected him to push, he backed down. Even the information I volunteered, he’d kept it safe instead of pulling it apart. Even when I told him that I hated it here.

I had never said the words aloud before. Not to anyone. I had hardly dared say them to myself.

It seemed the ultimate insult. Truthfully, someone guilty of my crimes should have been put to death long ago. I’d expected it more than once, and then had been granted a surprising and undeserved reprieve. Being exiled to live in Grimglass at a time when Corambins were uncertain of me and my magic – though I’d committed no real crimes in this country, at least – was at the time some strange breath of fresh air. I’d been buoyed by Mildmay’s shift in mood, buoyed by the joy of having my magic back after it had been bound away, I’d been so grateful to have a job to do. In the first three months it had been good.

The turning point was six months, when I’d needed something more than Grice’s notes, and gone down to the labyrinth desperate to remind myself that I was more than a hermit who looked over another hermit’s scratchings until I withered as he did.

Mildmay’s rage – inspired by his terror at my nearly dying – shocked me into compliance, complacence. After months of his thriving, I realised how easy it would be to ruin him. I realised how important it was that I stay safe, at least for him. I limited myself to pedestrian visits to the town, and one of those visits had ended in my being abducted by Darne’s men, attacked while I was unconscious, and Mildmay killing two people.

I had sworn he would never be put in that position again, and then he was.

It seemed prudent not to go off on my own after that. But Grimglass ate at me the way the ocean ate at the cliffs. I made the fire in the hearth the annemer way downstairs, I wondered if my magic would oxidise, even though I knew it didn’t work that way. I wanted to be grateful for Grimglass, for all it had done for us, for Mildmay.

I combed my hair as I stared at myself in the mirror. I was convinced Murtagh had done something to me today, couldn’t understand why I felt this way; destabilised, when I’d long resigned myself to the truth of Grimglass and my place here.

I narrowed my eyes in frustration. This was getting me nowhere. This introspection that I’d grown so fond of, since it seemed completely apropos for a wizard in a lighthouse to engage in. Initially I’d even liked the romantic image of it. But it was an introspection with claws, as moody as the constantly changing weather.

I left the bathroom. I didn’t bother with clothing, not even a robe. He could tell me if he wanted me dressed. The heating up here was adequate.

Murtagh had his large black bag on my bed, and he was rummaging around in it when I came out of the bathroom. He paused and looked at me, and my heart felt like it stopped a moment to have that gaze on mine.

Without another word he pointed down at a section of rug nearby, a clear order that I followed swiftly, kneeling several feet away from the bed. After a second, I remembered how he’d adjusted me last time, and shifted into the position as well as I could recall it. It was less stiff, less painful, even though kneeling could be its own torment. I clasped my hands at my lower back and stared ahead and tried to find the place I had found last time.

It eluded me. I could feel my hair as it dried into waves, clinging to my shoulders and back. The nerves there, beneath the scars, could never decide whether it was itchy or painful or neutral or nothing at all. Sometimes it was all four at once.

‘We’re going to be doing something a little different today, Felix,’ Murtagh said.

‘Yes, Sir,’ I said quietly.

‘I’m going to be asking you for your opinion on some things. When I ask for your opinion, I want _your_ opinion, and not what you think mine should be, do you understand?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ I said, blinking as I tried to imagine what that might mean.

With Malkar, my opinions had never led to anything that worked in my favour. My hands tightened behind my back.

Murtagh faced his bag, drawing lengths of rope out of it. Then a flogger, and I felt momentarily dizzy, because it was so like a scourge and I hadn’t had the misfortune of needing to deal with one in such a long time.

A scourge had ripped my back apart. More than once.

It was so tempting to end it then. _Thank you for the lovely afternoon, we must do this again, I’ll see you next time._

I didn’t notice the other objects Murtagh drew out of his bag, my mind racing, but I stiffened when I heard him approach. He knelt before me and cupped my cheek and watched me closely, and I looked somewhere past him, wondering if I’d been wrong all along. Wrong about the purpose of why he was here. Wrong about relaxing into his apology.

Of course he found it easy to apologise when he had this planned.

Murtagh’s other hand dropped down to my chest, and he rested it there and watched me. Then he looked back to the bed, then back to me.

After a moment he stood and withdrew, all I could think were how warm his hands had been. He came back with the scourge – no, _flogger_ , even the lashes were cut differently, it wasn’t designed to hurt in the same way, I knew that, didn’t I know that? – and knelt in front of me again.

‘Was it this?’ he said.

He knew. He’d taken a measure of my heartrate, seen whatever was on my face that I couldn’t school away, and he knew.

_Was it this, that frightened you?_

‘Didn’t you mean for it to be, Sir?’ I said, my voice so neutral and even that I almost applauded myself for sounding so self-controlled.

‘Answer my question, Felix,’ Murtagh said, his voice harder.

I didn’t flinch, I didn’t close my eyes, I didn’t twitch. In that moment, I was perfectly non-responsive and already so, so off-balance.

‘Yes, Sir,’ I said.

‘This was what they used? Or something like it?’

‘A scourge, Sir,’ I said. ‘A nun’s scourge.’

Really, it had only been small. But so was I, at the time. Had I not known the damage it could do, I would have seen it as an adult and laughed.

And I had used something similar enough towards the end of my time in Melusine, when I’d destroyed that boy in lieu of destroying Mildmay the way I wanted to. I’d substituted whips and floggers and a stranger’s back and the privilege to maul him for the violence I truly craved, after I’d hit Mildmay so hard I’d scored his face with my rings. I knew, very well, the hunger and the wildness that might drive a man to reach for those instruments. I knew what it was to be prone beneath them, and I knew what it was to make someone prone, to hear the music of their screams and cries and come back to horror and humanity only belatedly; an ill-fitting, ill-suited mask.

‘Do you want me to put this away?’ Murtagh said.

No. No, I didn’t want to want _anything._ I wanted him to make every decision, and I wanted to have no part in whatever crimes he was going to make me complicit in over the next few hours. I wanted to give my body to him and leave my mind somewhere else.

And he had already told me that he wanted my opinions, and he watched me like he knew how much I’d hate this. It was on the tip of my tongue to simply ask him what he wanted to do instead. Sir, what is it that you desire me to want?

I could see that wasn’t what he was looking for.

‘It’s not a trap, Felix,’ Murtagh said, still holding the flogger by its handle with an easy, practiced, experienced grip. ‘But you must give me a clear answer.’ He paused and leaned in closer, his voice lowering. ‘I know this breaks the rules you’re familiar with, darling, but if you leave me waiting I will be so disappointed.’

I hated him.

‘I want you to put it away, Sir,’ I managed, refusing to meet his eyes. Painfully aware that he didn’t have to do whatever I said. He didn’t tell me he was going to do it, he only asked what I thought about it.

He didn’t move for a moment, and I felt suspended between the weight of his imagined wrath, and the reality that was just him there kneeling before me, shorter than me, and yet somehow so imposing.

He stood and walked back to the bed, he put the flogger away. My eyes flashed up to him in shock, but went down to the rug again. I felt exhausted from that small conversation alone. I was ready for him to inflict whatever he wanted, ready to offer him my body, give him whatever he craved and be done with it. I needed this, but I’d spent most of my life hating that fact about myself, and I hated it now.

He made a sharp hissing sound as he fidgeted with something on the bed, as though he’d hurt himself, and then he laughed quietly and went back to whatever he was doing. A moment later he turned back to me.

‘I want you to close your eyes, Felix.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ I said, closing them.

He walked over and I heard him reach down, felt his fingers under my chin as he drew it up so that I was kneeling in a more proud position than the one I’d adopted when he’d held the flogger less than a foot away from me.

‘I’m going to give you two options,’ Murtagh said. ‘Option one, and option two. At the end, I want you to choose which one you prefer. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ I said, and couldn’t help wringing my hands at my lower back, just the once.

‘Good lad,’ he said, ruffling my hair like I was a child, and I bit the inside of my lip and then exhaled slowly through my nose as he put the blindfold on me. He’d used one last time, too. Maybe, as I thought of the Clock of Eclipses, it was a Corambin predilection. But no, the blindfolding during the Clock of Eclipses was so I couldn’t easily identify my attackers and would-be murderers. Murtagh’s blindfold was soft, rested comfortably over my eyes, and he knotted it behind my head and checked that it hadn’t snagged my hair.

‘Open your eyes. Can you see anything?’

‘A sliver of light at the bottom and top, Sir, nothing else.’

‘Good. This is option one. I want you to close your eyes again.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

The blindfold was removed and Murtagh’s fingers were there on my face, ghosting over my eyebrows, the crepe-thin skin of my eyelids.

‘Keep your eyelids closed,’ Murtagh said firmly, like he expected me to open them again. I only nodded and I felt him shift something else into place.

I felt the prick of many pieces of metal against my eyelids first, and at once the second blindfold was pressed into place and a myriad of stabbing pains pushed into my eyes and I reared back in shock. He had a hand at my shoulders, the blindfold stayed in place, and then as I gasped for breath he knotted it behind my head.

‘They’re not cutting you,’ Murtagh said. ‘It just feels like they are. The skin of your eyelids is sensitive.’

_Sensitive,_ he said. My eyes were already tearing up, the little metal spikes stabbing in, threatening my sight. It wasn’t just the blindfold, I worried about being wounded. I couldn’t ever remember Malkar using something like this. He would have _loved_ it.

Murtagh’s hand came up and rested at the back of my head, cradling it, and then he shifted the blindfold minutely and I felt all the metal shift and drag against the skin and flinched. I couldn’t rid myself of the thought of my eyesight being damaged, my eyes pierced, what if one piece of metal was too sharp? What if the blindfold was knocked into me? Even Murtagh’s hand at my face felt like a dire threat.

‘This,’ Murtagh said, ‘is option two. Tell me which one you prefer.’

I knew which one I preferred. My mouth opened to say it automatically and I stopped myself at the last minute.

Murtagh _was_ breaking all the rules. This went against everything I’d known with Malkar, with Lorenzo, even with clients at the Shining Tiger. My role wasn’t to state my preferences, not like this, not now. In that moment I couldn’t decide what was worse, the horrid little blindfold, or being asked to make choices like this, never knowing if he’d agree with what I wanted, never knowing if preferring one thing now meant it would be worse somehow later.

Murtagh’s hand returned to the back of my head, his thumb carding through my hair. ‘One or two, Felix? It’s a simple question.’

‘I…’

He shifted when I didn’t properly respond, and I flinched, expecting something terrible.

His lips brushed against mine. ‘Which one, Felix?’

‘Option one, Sir,’ I said, my breath shaking against his mouth.

‘Good boy,’ he said, fingers tightening in my hair. ‘Keep your eyes closed.’

Then he untied the blindfold and moved it away carefully. His thumbs stroked over my tingling, sore eyelids, and then moved up to the ridges of my brows, massaging over the skin there. After a minute of that, after I remembered what steadier breathing felt like, he placed the first blindfold over my eyelids. The soft one. If I wasn’t so well-trained, I would have sagged in relief.

He walked back to the bed and returned, and I tried to present myself as calm and yielding and eager and obedient, but nothing about what he was doing was familiar. It was like he’d taken the script and inverted it. I couldn’t take comfort in this, and I was desperate to have his fingers on my eyelids again, his hand at the back of my head.

All I could think of was Lorenzo calling me spoiled after a particular client had mixed kindness in with his cruelty, and I’d petulantly asked for more clients like that one. Lorenzo had been furious. I was spoiled and rotten and useless with that sort of attitude.

Murtagh knelt beside me once more, nearly behind me this time, and his hand passed over mine where they knotted together, knuckles against the scar tissue on my back.

‘I’m not being fair to you, am I?’

I had no idea how to answer that. Yes, he was being fairer than much of what I’d known or understood of these games. No, he wasn’t being fair. My eyelids ached. If he would just whip me and then fuck me, even that would be easier.

‘I don’t know, Sir.’

‘Well, I do. I’m not being very fair at all.’

He drew my hands apart and then shifted my arms so that he could tie them behind my back, forearms locked together, shoulders barely straining. He moved the rope adeptly, swiftly, not just with the confidence of someone used to roping horses, but with someone practiced at roping humans, too.

‘This is option one,’ Murtagh said, placing his hand over the knot at my wrist.

The idea of being made to make another choice made my skin prickle with unpleasant coldness.

He left the ropes there for a few minutes, and I couldn’t even enjoy them. I waited, cock deplorably limp, desperately searching for the part of me that just surrendered to all of it and came up empty.

Murtagh untied the rope and then immediately began to retie it. I could tell the difference from how meanly the rope bit into my skin. He worked quickly, roughly, and I realised before that even the way he’d positioned my arms and moved my body was a choice he made. Now he yanked my hands and forearms into position, my shoulders wrenched painfully backwards and my back arched to compensate, and he made a clicking noise with his tongue and forced my back to straighten.

There would be no compensation for the pain he wanted me to be in.

When he finished tying me, my teeth were locked together as I tried to breathe through the pain. It wasn’t the worst I’d been through, so why couldn’t I get a handle on it?

‘Option two,’ Murtagh said. ‘Choose which one you prefer.’

‘Option one, Sir,’ I said, and then stilled, shocked at how swiftly I’d responded. What if he _wanted_ option two? ‘But whatever you prefer is-’

Fingers over my mouth as his other hand began working to undo the rope. 

‘No.’ That single word held disappointment in it, and I would have done nearly anything to remove it from his voice, except the one thing he wanted me to do, which was play his stupid game.

He removed his hand from my mouth and untied the ropes, and then he curled one hand around my upper arm, the other bracing my shoulder, and he stretched the joints out himself. I stayed as malleable as possible, some warmth kindling at the easy way he touched and directed me to move, at the pleasure-pain that was stretching after ties that were too tight.

He re-tied my arms in the first position, and when he returned to the bed, I imagined what he might get me to choose next time and scared myself. Would someone else have been choosing the second options? Would they want to please their tarquin so fundamentally they’d make the right choices, even through the pain? There was no way I could do that and make it sound natural. He would know I was lying. And lying to Malkar was forbidden.

‘Where do you keep your spare blankets?’ Murtagh said after a pause.

I had to think for a moment, to remember. ‘The cupboard. At the bottom.’

I heard his steps, but everything felt as though it came to me from a distance. For some people, having one of their senses blunted heightened the rest of them. For me, it always seemed to take something additional away from the rest. My mind oscillating wildly between hypersensitivity, and a dim, muffled sense that the blindfold hurt my hearing, my voice.

When Murtagh closed the cupboard, he came back over and lay the blanket over my calves and feet, tucking it around my knees. ‘You’re getting cold.’

My mouth opened. I couldn’t think what to say in response to that, for long minutes I tried to understand what had just happened.

‘Thank you, Sir,’ I said belatedly.

‘You’re welcome.’

This time, when he returned, I knew enough to dread what might be coming next. It was tempting to just declare I wanted option one now. I’d given up on liking whatever option two might be.

What if that was what he truly wanted from his martyrs? His shadows? What if he was only now showing me what he really liked – who owned a blindfold like that otherwise? – and I’d made the mistake of thinking myself seasoned and experienced when it turned out I was nothing but naïve and inadequate to his desires?

‘Oh, Felix,’ he said, far closer to me than I realised. His hands drew my face up, and he stood before me. I almost opened my mouth then and there, ready for something familiar, the reassuring weight of a cock in my mouth.

Instead, he traced his fingers over my face. His thumbs over my cheekbones. The fingertips of his index and middle fingers along my hairline and then falling lower, to the outer shells of my ears. And in that moment, I was reminded so much of Gideon that I drowned in the wave of grief that followed.

He didn’t stop and the sorrow passed, tangled up and tucked away in the sensual movement of his palms and fingers, the way he gathered up a hank of my hair and let it fall down again, the way his fingers ducked beneath to the back of my neck, touching the space there like he was more familiar with that shadowed, sensitive space than I was.

There were beatings I had taken which were easier to bear.

‘I’m going to give you two options,’ Murtagh said, and my entire chest clenched, I almost begged him then and there to stop. To tell him that it would always be option one, to tell him that I wasn’t capable of what I thought I was. Not with him. Not at all.

Had I become so weak, since coming to Grimglass?

‘This is option one,’ he said, drawing his hands back up to my mouth. He drew his fingers over my lips and then pushed between them, between my teeth, over my tongue, and I thought _finally,_ but he didn’t undo the fastening of his pants. After a while I gave up trying to understand what he was doing. I forgot, even, that there was supposed to be a second option.

When he drew his hands back, severing the intimacy he’d created between us, he picked something up. I heard the clink of metal. And then fingers at my still lax mouth wrenched my jaw open and I cried out at the sudden mean stretch at the corners of my lips when minutes ago it had only been claiming tenderness.

Before I could even think to relax, a contraption of metal was shoved into my mouth, a metal ring to keep my mouth open and accessible, spidering hooks to keep my lips spread and uncomfortable, and this, _this_ was something Malkar had done. But where I would have tried to hold back my panic for as long as possible with Malkar, it spilled out here. I made some hoarse, humiliating sound and struggled without thinking – but my arms were bound behind me, knotted in place – and Murtagh stood there and caught my head up in his hands and held me still.

‘Come on now,’ he said, roughly chafing at my cheek to get my attention. ‘Felix, pay attention.’

My mouth hurt. One of the prongs was digging up into my gums, I could taste the strange metallic tang that was either the contraption or my blood or perhaps both. I knew we both heard my breathing, awful and loud and unhindered. In that moment I was nothing more than an animal, a beast he’d bought and could do whatever he liked to.

‘Felix,’ he said, his voice chastening enough that I managed to pull shreds of myself back together. Nostrils flaring as I tried to force myself to breathe through my nose instead of my throat. ‘There we are. That’s good. Here, I’m not leaving and when all is said and done, you’ll get a choice in this. And that’s good, isn’t it? It’s good to get a choice, sometimes, Felix.’

I would have said my preference then and there, but I was stuck. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t signal. I couldn’t even look at him and beg him with my gaze. And his legs were up against the side of my body, and his hands and arms were around my head, and my mouth hurt and I’d simply never considered him capable of this.

‘Hush,’ he said. ‘Another couple of minutes and then I’ll let you know how you can tell me which one you choose. It’s not a trap.’

At least Malkar’s cruelty was predictable. Even when Malkar had been a measure of the word kind, it always led to exactly the same place. The window dressing of it might have changed from time to time, but it was always torture, it was always pain.

Whatever Murtagh brought was something new. I was supposed to be too seasoned to know this feeling again. Too worn down, too used up, too brutalised. I wasn’t even surprised in the end at what had happened at the Clock of Eclipses. I’d only bothered fighting back when that woman had raped me. And even then it had done some good, nothing else had woken me up to the way I’d been behaving around Mildmay until then, after all. There was a comfort in knowing I’d been through it all, knowing that even if someone managed to fuck me for power and pain instead of love in the future, it wouldn’t mean anything.

But now, in this moment, there was only one anchor and it wasn’t in my own head. And he stood there, and I hardly knew him, and this was only our second meeting together – like this – as free men, because the first time I’d met him he’d paid for me.

‘I’m going to look behind you,’ Murtagh said. ‘I know you can move your fingers in that binding. I want you to hold out two fingers, or a single one. Two fingers for what’s happening now, and one for-’

I had stuck out one finger as far as I possibly could, and Murtagh must have been looking for it, even though I hadn’t heard him shift at all.

‘Ah,’ he said quietly. His voice was warm, not disappointed at all. ‘Good. _Very_ good, Felix. Let’s get this out of your mouth, shall we?’

I could do nothing but kneel there and wait, trying to stifle my whimpers, knees aching as his fingers eased into my spit-drenched mouth and pulled the prongs away from sensitive flesh. I flinched, a pool of heat in one side of my gums confirmed they were bleeding after all. I knew he realised it for himself when he stuck his finger up into that private space and drew it back, making a sound like he wasn’t impressed. And then the horrid thing was gone, I heard him toss it onto the bed, and I clamped my mouth shut and resisted the urge to curl forwards and hide myself away with some force of will I didn’t think I had left available to me.

Should it have mattered, that I cared so much about disappointing the ghosts of my past? That I knew this would have angered Lorenzo? Or Keeper? Or Malkar? But it mattered. I saw myself from a distance, saw all the ways I was graceless and faulty.

Murtagh knelt before me and his lips pressed to my cheek, and it was a benediction. I leaned into him automatically and one of his arms wrapped around me.

‘It’s not so bad, is it, Felix? It’s not so bad to have a softer flame after all. Why, even you like the soft option sometimes.’

It took me a moment to realise how all of this circled back on our encounter last time. And when I remembered how I’d accused him of being soft, I reared violently back – he let me go as though he expected it – abruptly betrayed and shaken by the fact that all of this had been a punchline to something he could have just _said._

But no tarquin – or flame, it turned out – said something in words if they could say it on someone else’s flesh.

And I remembered my own words as clearly as if I’d said them an hour ago:

_‘If I’d known you only four or five years ago, I would have excoriated you for being far too soft. And for a tarquin no less. …You inconvenience yourself for my comfort, like you are made of weakness instead of strength. Are you sure_ you’re _not a shadow?’_

I’d baited him. He’d had weeks to compose his response. And I was felled by it. Because I knelt there, unmanned and unable to process that this felt like the beginning of something and not the end. He wasn’t done with me, not at all. I was upset, I was afraid. I didn’t know how this weekend could be salvaged, and I wasn’t sure it was meant to be.

In that moment, I realised I craved the softness, but I was no longer sure there was anything soft about him.


	10. Guidance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is there a playlist for this story? [Absolutely there is.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5OA6jFWIqkgk8OCjzenohG?si=UcZFUI8jTieWQdKpMrX46Q)
> 
> Author's note: Subspace here is referred to as being 'lightstruck.' 
> 
> New tags: Flogging (give Murtagh a chance alksdjfsa)

_Murtagh_

*

Finally I could see the complete lack of trust he had in me. His lack of faith in this process, his true discomfort in circumstances like this. It shouldn’t have been as satisfying as it was, except I knew it was there all along and I’d expected far more resistance to pushing him down to this point. Likely the fact that the afternoon had gone well had made him more vulnerable than usual to the game I was playing tonight. It was cruel. It looked kinder than what he was used to, but it wasn’t.

It would be easy to take a pound of flesh from Felix’s body, but I was cutting into his mind.

Part of me wanted to remove the ropes, the blindfold, bundle him up in that worn blanket and do what most merciful people would do. But at the end of the day I was still a flame, this was a journey of consumption not yet completed and I was determined to do right by the both of us. But outside of an involuntary memory of multiple drownings that he couldn’t help, this was the most frightened I’d ever seen him, the meekest he’d ever been.

I’d expected him to lash out, but I suspected that beneath all his terror and mistrust, he was a true shadow. He needed part of this process more than he needed to push away from me and declare it done. Or maybe he was too brutalised to know it was an option.

But no, I’d seen him thrive beneath my mouth and hands and controlling desires, and there were aspects of his surrender and shadowplay that he couldn’t manufacture, that couldn’t be inspired by horror and conditioning alone. Everything about his soft, immediate yielding in the woods had proven that.

And that was really at the root of what I was trying to discover. What he genuinely liked, what he genuinely didn’t. When he felt safe with me, when he didn’t. The shape of him that hid within the shape of what he’d been made into.

My task as a flame was to illuminate, so illuminate him I did.

I’d learned that during informal submission, away from a bedroom, he yielded so perfectly there was nothing I could have done to improve upon him. Except, perhaps, encourage him to be more free with touching me. I’d learned that he didn’t like pain for its own sake – he’d told me in his playfully cruel manner, but I needed to be sure. I’d learned he loathed admitting when he liked something and would avoid admitting preferences whenever possible. I was certain he’d been punished for having any at all.

He couldn’t handle being trapped or tricked. Some shadows craved it during shadowplay. They needed to feel off balance or even humiliated. Just a hint of it with Felix distressed him. Lady, even _imagining_ it seemed to send him there. Saying the words ‘this is not a trap’ offered him a lifeline, and he hated the sensation of being trapped so much that I could see him clinging to those words, no idea whether he was trapped or not.

I knew that he felt humiliated by what I’d done to him. I expected him to hate being reminded that he’d called me too soft, and he did. And I knew – after his need to pick every ‘softer’ option – that he would feel ashamed of his own preferences. Every flame knows how to burn and scar and I wasn’t above shoving his own needs in front of him, nor was I above watching him cringe away from the truth of himself. 

As the weeks had passed, I realised there was no shame in softness. I’d made the mistake of taking his shame into myself, only to see how ridiculous it was after speaking to Gisela. I’d taken the metal O-ring gag and the blindfold from Keane’s supply, since that was far more his kind of play than mine. I’d spent time determined to learn if Felix was better suited to my style of consumption than he thought, and it helped me realise what kind of flame I was in the process.

So now I could finally progress to the next stage. I was relieved we’d gotten here so quickly, I had a mental list of about ten things I could have done to drive him to this point. But Keane’s blindfold had started things off nicely, and the metal gag had finished it off. I wasn’t surprised. Felix didn’t like blindfolds, and his mouth was exquisitely sensitive.

Felix reacted to kissing like it was a gift better than any other. It was inevitable that being cruel to his mouth would destabilise him. I was angry at myself for having drawn blood though. I thought I’d checked all the spokes thoroughly for sharpness, or perhaps Felix’s gums were sensitive. I was surprised that Felix hadn’t drawn attention to it, even when I had his blood on my finger. I’d have to tread very carefully around him and injury, he obviously wouldn’t flag it voluntarily.

I watched him. His heaving bare chest, the sheen of cold sweat over him, the way he telegraphed all his emotions even when I couldn’t see his eyes. The way he couldn’t hide himself in his blank receptiveness.

Well, I’d made my point. Time to make the next one.

I stood and bent behind him, grasping his forearms firmly. ‘Stand up, Felix.’

Even off balance as he was, he still pushed himself upright as I helped him, the blanket sliding off his calves and pooling around his ankles. I could feel his trembling. I reached up and tucked some of his hair behind his ear and looked up at him, and knew his was a kind of pride I couldn’t leave shattered like this. It wasn’t true pride. It came from no hearty, nurtured place. But it was all he had, and he needed some of it returned to him now.

‘You handled that all so well,’ I said. ‘So well.’

His head twitched towards me, and I could see his eyebrows furrowing over the blindfold. I doubted he believed me, but the little rabbit needed the words all the same.

‘We’re moving to the bed now, come along.’

I pushed him gently and he stumbled forwards, having no choice but to trust that I wasn’t leading him into furniture. All his smooth, trained conditioning was gone. The obedience that remained was automatic, nearly primitive.

We slowed down just before his knees bumped into the bed. I left him standing there and worked at the rope’s knot behind him, before sliding the rope free from his arms. I guided his hands down to his sides, and he didn’t resist. I turned him, encouraged him to sit, and then I placed my hands on his knees and pulled them apart. When I stepped between them, I stood over him, taller than he was when he sat on the bed like this and able to take advantage of it.

I bent down and pressed my lips to the crown of his head and he tensed, the surprise palpable. A finger under his chin, he tilted his head up towards me and I took his mouth as gently as I knew how. I could taste the echo of blood, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been, I suspected the wound was already healing. Felix’s breathing turned shallow, he swallowed down a whimper before he could truly catch it, and I hoped – Holy Lady, how I hoped – that the rest of this evening would go the way I wanted it to.

The books had not told me to do _this._ Gisela would string me up by my balls if she knew, but the books talked of flames getting to know a shadow, and had no examples for my situation. Felix and I had a measure of each other. And unlike some of the shadows in those case studies, Felix did not volunteer information willingly when asked. So I devised methods to get that information for myself, and I could tell Felix didn’t know all the answers anyway until I drew them out. I suspected Keane would secretly approve of my methods, which was all the more reason to go carefully now.

I drew my lips back and pressed my forehead to his, stroking the back of his neck, over and over again.

‘That was option one,’ I said.

Felix’s reaction was swift and predictable. The tension, the sudden pulling back. My hand was already in place, now firm against his neck, catching him and stopping him from going anywhere. 

‘This will go a bit differently,’ I said. ‘Now, when I give you two options, you might not always know which one you prefer.’

I could feel the long pause where he possibly didn’t hear anything I had said, likely fearing what had happened before. Then a slight loosening in his body. I could tell the moment he’d heard my words and a sliver of curiosity crept in amongst the doubt, the humiliation.

‘So now,’ I said evenly, firmly, ‘if you aren’t sure of an option, I don’t want you to guess one, and I’m not going to force you to choose one, nor do I expect you to always know. I want you to _tell_ me you don’t know. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ Felix said.

‘Good boy,’ I said, and he shivered. ‘You may also find that you enjoy both options at different times. If that’s the case, tell me that you like both.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ Felix said, a hint of confusion in his voice.

‘There,’ I said. Our faces were so close, I could feel the way he pressed closer at my words. ‘You’re so beautifully obedient, aren’t you? Look at you, trying to please me.’

Felix nodded, the gesture absent. ‘I…’

I waited for the rest of his words, then placed my hands on his shoulders when they didn’t come. ‘Tell me.’

His shoulders tensed, like he wanted to shrink in on himself. ‘I almost always want to please you, Sir.’

I wondered how much it cost him to say those words, for they were raw and small, and I was sure he didn’t feel comfortable admitting them after what I’d done to him. My own eyes briefly squeezed shut. It was painful to know that someone as eager for praise as Felix, was so deprived of it.

‘You have pleased me, Felix. I want you to know, you haven’t failed at all tonight. You’ve answered my questions, you’ve given me your preferences, you haven’t lied to me. Anyone can see you’re trying so hard to please me.’

He trembled, and I gently massaged the back of his head and left a silence where the words could sink in.

‘I could have done better, Sir,’ he said eventually.

‘Is that a choice you get to make, Felix? Here, in this room, with me? Is that a choice I gave you?’

Felix fell silent, and I pressed my mouth to his furrowed brow.

‘Answer the question,’ I said.

‘I suppose not, Sir.’

‘Be clearer, Felix.’

‘No, Sir.’

There was no point punishing him for any of his hesitations, his evasions. He was genuinely afraid. I knew he could handle a punishment, but I wanted to loosen the chains he had around himself and how he behaved. He tried so hard to be obedient despite his terror, but that was training and conditioning.

I needed his terror to come from me, not something from his past. It was greedy of me, and I made no apology for it.

Perhaps he needed a lover who didn’t want to see him writhing in pleasure and agony at once. Perhaps he needed someone who would take him softly by the hand and whisper to him that he was always perfect and need never be obedient, who never wanted to see his skin blush red and then bruise after a blow.

I wasn’t kind enough to pretend I wasn’t a flame, even for him.

‘Now,’ I said, keeping his head still with one hand at his neck, the other cupping his ear and scalp. ‘Option two.’

I’d been dying to kiss him like this since we’d laid down outside in the woods. I claimed him, slicking my tongue up alongside his, pressing up into his gums to taste for myself how much blood was still oozing – I didn’t think any, now – and he made a small, startled noise and then leaned hard into me with a need that sent sparks through me.

My hand at his head curved around until I could get a solid grip on his hair, and I curled the fingers of my other hand into the back of his head and moved him the way I wanted him, kissing him until I felt dizzy, until he gasped when I drew my mouth back before I claimed his mouth again. And when I fucked my tongue casually into his mouth, he shuddered with strong arousal for the first time since the evening had started. My hand dropped from his neck to the junction of his legs, and as I felt how hard he was getting, I bit his lower lip, dragged teeth across it, licked over his open mouth as he panted.

‘Which one, Felix?’ I said, my voice rougher than before. ‘Which do you prefer?’

A long pause where he was catching his breath. I could feel how tense his pelvis was, he didn’t rock up into my hand where it rested on his still-hardening cock, but I could tell that he wanted the friction.

Then a thoughtful silence, which was so much better than him asking me what I preferred.

‘Both, Sir,’ Felix finally said, sounding wondering as he said it.

‘That,’ I said, pausing for emphasis, ‘was perfect.’

And he tilted his head up like he could make eye contact with me, even though he couldn’t see me through the blindfold. His tongue ran over his lips, and then he looked down again, and I wished I could shove my hands inside his head and find out what he was thinking.

Instead, I guided him fully onto the bed, and turned him onto his front. I was certain he expected to be fucked, but instead I sat by his shoulders and his head, hoped I hadn’t read his previous body language wrong when I started dragging my fingers through his hair. This was sensual for the sake of it, indulgent for the sake of it, not even intended to be all that arousing.

He was tense at first, no doubt trying to understand what was happening, and what response I expected from him. But eventually he relaxed into my long, slow strokes that were firm over his scalp and soft through his hair. It was nearly completely dry now, still damp close to his skin, and I teased out the tangles gently and thought about how I did this for Isobel sometimes when she would allow me. Our relationship had been unconventional from the very beginning, when I realised my arranged marriage was not with some ordinary woman after all, but a stubborn, half-wild creature who more deserved the dragon moniker than I did.

I had never expected to love her, and I knew others didn’t understand it at all. Why, even Kay had once implied that I’d assaulted his sister, because he didn’t understand my relationship with Isobel either. But she was fierce and fantastic and pragmatic, and when she found Dunne for herself, I was happy. Because we loved each other, but we’d never been fully compatible in the bedroom, or in nearly anything else except politics. I could acquit myself well enough, but Dunne was wholly focused on her, and her alone.

And as I looked down at Felix, his laxness as he accepted my languid caresses over his hair like a cat receiving its due, I could feel how this gave me something I’d not even realised was missing when I occasionally hired shadow jezebels for a single evening.

Felix’s breathing had turned genuinely slow when my hand coasted to a stop. I almost regretted speaking.

‘That was option one,’ I said.

He tensed, but not as badly as before. In some ways, I couldn’t believe how easy this was, but I knew it was likely because no one had ever been like this with him. No one had ever been so clear, and then followed through without tricking him along the way. I had thought there was nothing I could do to him that would be new, but it turned out there was, and when he realised that old philosophies didn’t apply, he was a quick study.

I guided him onto his hands and knees, running a hand down his flank as I shifted my own position, kneeling between his legs. And then – as I had been craving since the very beginning of our reacquaintance – I gathered up his hair and wrapped it around my hand until I had it in a tight grasp, his head tilted backwards, breathing audible. I palmed the outside of his thigh and imagined how good it would be to fuck him while I had him on a leash of his own making.

‘Option two,’ I said. ‘Which one, Felix?’

‘Yes,’ he breathed, the word soft and absent. ‘Both, Sir.’

‘Good,’ I said, tugging on his hair a few times, ‘because I like this too.’

I waited another minute, then carefully let go of his hair. I undressed, then moved until I laid beside him, propped up on the pillows of his bed – which needed better stuffing – and gently touched his forearm to get his attention. I ran my hand down his arm until I could reach his hand and then prompted him with my tugging. He shifted his weight in response, and I drew his hand towards me.

As my fingers moved over his, I frowned, then quickly checked his knuckles.

_Holy blessed Lady…_

Why hadn’t I noticed before?

‘Your fingers have been broken,’ I said, confused. ‘In multiple places.’

‘I used to fidget, Sir,’ Felix said, his response calm.

That told me three things. First, that he was more relaxed than I’d known. I’d not attempted to coerce an answer out of him, and I hadn’t made it a direct question, yet his response had been easy. Second, the information was so obvious to him that he saw no reason in hiding it from me. The third…the third was something I already knew; his past was horrendous.

He used to fidget. So his fingers had been broken? In multiple places? I shifted and looked over at his other hand where it braced him and now that I was looking for it, saw the way his knuckles weren’t just knobbly, but were misshapen in places.

Also, Felix still fidgeted. He wasn’t doing it this instant, but I’d seen him do it many times, so whatever habit he was supposed to be cured of, it hadn’t worked. I frowned at him while he couldn’t see me doing it, and then got frustrated with myself for getting distracted. I drew his hand to my chest and rested it there, and his fingers shifted hungrily, then stilled.

‘Come here and touch me,’ I said. ‘But leave my cock alone.’

He braced himself with the hand on my chest and moved towards me fluidly, with more confidence than I expected. But as soon as he had both hands on the hair on my chest, he hesitated.

And then, slowly, he began to touch me. I settled back into the bed and sighed, pleased, because I wanted him to reciprocate more often and he had a habit of staying very still, unless he was close to coming, or he was outside with me in the woods. I remembered the way he’d kissed the scarring on my arm the first time we’d met, after he undressed me. Tender and careful, an instinctive compassion that seemed to go beyond his conditioning and what I’d asked him to do for me.

His hands skirted down towards my half-hard cock, and then slowed; he frowned. I was certain he’d been given leave to touch many clients, but I doubted any of them had asked them _not_ to touch their cocks.

He took a few shallow breaths, and then inhaled deeply and moved his hands back up. And then, to my surprise, he sat beside me, bending his legs, and began to explore. He paused after each caress, as though waiting for me to say something, and when I didn’t – or murmured that he was doing well – he kept going, bolder and far more curious. He dragged his long fingers up the sides of my neck and back down again, making me shiver. He explored the hair on my arms – running his hand through it like one might ruck up the fur of a cat – all the way to my naked hands.

He touched each of my fingers like he was counting them, and then he kept my hand spread with both of his, and shifted his position until he could bend down and press his mouth to my palm. My eyes closed, I gave myself up to the tingling, wet pressure of his tongue and the way he moved his mouth over each crease of skin. Was he imagining that they had no tattoos, like his did? Or did he only care for the taste and feeling of it?

He spent time with my chest, and though he paid some attention to my nipples – which weren’t all that sensitive – he seemed just as eager to press the side of his head along the rise and fall of a pectoral muscle, or to bury his nose in the dip between, inhaling slowly, before he licked up the centre until he reached the divot between my collarbones.

He was careful with my face. He touched my eyebrows, my eyelashes, and then came back to them as though fascinated with their thickness. He grabbed a handful of my short hair in a way that was so possessive that I could see it, how he’d been a tarquin, how there was a part of him that always desired power over others, whether for his own safety, or because he liked it. But when he let go of my hair, he rubbed gently over my scalp, as though to soothe it after what he’d done.

He bent over my face and I waited, cock harder than before, while his fingers found the corners of my mouth, and his lips followed. The kiss was careful, exploratory, and where he’d grasped my hair, this wasn’t possessive at all. It was as though he was asking a question, and I reached up and grabbed his shoulder and the back of his neck and answered him. He lowered himself down until our bellies were touching and he was arched over me, kissing me.

After that, he slid down my torso and then paused somewhere around my navel – after dipping his tongue in it – and rose back up again. I watched his lips twist on a wry smile, almost self-deprecating, and then his nose dropped to my armpit. I lifted my eyebrows, moved my arm to give him access, and then grinned because it felt sinfully good and there weren’t many Corambins who had shed their body shyness so completely that this would be easy for them.

Felix’s tongue was clever as it licked up over the sensitive skin where my arm met my torso, and then he bit very lightly at my bicep, not enough to even ache, just a flash of texture amongst the smoothness and wetness. After that, he lay his head against my arm, like he wasn’t sure he’d be allowed to. His hair fell over my chest, my shoulder, a strand of it clung to my jaw. And I felt him breathing over my skin, his cheek against my skin, a reminder that he wasn’t as warm as he should be, though at least warmer than before.

I looked towards him and saw that mass of scar tissue across his back, and with my other arm I reached across and pressed my hand against it. His breaths halted, then shook, but I did nothing else except keep my hand there.

After a minute, he made a small, wounded sound like I’d hurt him. But then the line of his spine relaxed and he turned his head towards my arm in surrender. I ran my hand up over those ropes of tissue until I reached his hair, the back of his neck, and petted him.

I wondered how soft he thought it all was, how scathing he felt about it, how much he wanted to convince me that I could do so much more to him. He didn’t seem to comprehend that as soon as there was a power differential, as soon as one person had to call the other Sir, wasn’t allowed to speak or ask questions out of turn, wasn’t allowed to direct what was happening or influence it – what was happening was no longer _soft_ by default.

If he found gentleness and sensuality and intimacy here, it was because I willed it and he wanted it. But that he had to wrap his mouth around the word Sir and kneel to get it, meant it was already designed to be a challenge for him.

I wondered if he’d ever understand that.

‘You are beautiful,’ I said, turning towards him until my chest pressed against his back. ‘And this hair… I loved it when it was short, but I will always have an especial fondness for it when you keep it long.’

‘Thank you, Sir,’ Felix breathed.

He pressed his lips to my arm, and then turned in my arms and seemed to realise I hadn’t told him to stop touching me. He felt out the scar on my other arm and shifted until he could kiss that too. It sent a shiver through me. The scar was horrendous, the tissue corrugated and twisted up, red and angry. It was a wonder I hadn’t lost the arm entirely. I could barely feel Felix’s lips upon me; the weight of his generosity touched me instead.

But ah, he was facing me now, and I grinned as I hooked an arm around his shoulders and reached between us until my fingers wrapped around his cock. It was hard and hot in my hand, and I jacked him slowly.

‘You’re not to come,’ I said firmly.

He nodded automatically, but then his eyebrows pinched together when I didn’t stop working my hand on him. I was careful with the thin and sensitive skin, but I also twisted too roughly when I felt like it, or pinched up the skin at the base. He shifted like he wasn’t sure what to do, then tipped towards me and pushed his forehead hard against my shoulder.

I worked him until he was trembling, small puffs of air against me, and then I kept on going until I felt his hips tense and his shoulders pull back like he had to get away.

‘Sir,’ he said. And then, when I didn’t stop, a bitten off, wretched noise as his entire lower body went tight. _‘Sir.’_

I bit my lower lip and caught up the base of his cock in a cruel grip, and he shuddered and bowed in on himself. It was enough to stop him from coming in the moment, though I had forced men to orgasm while I had the base of their cock crushed in my hand like this. I wouldn’t do it to him. I wasn’t interested in trapping him. I’d seen too easily how much damage that could do.

‘Good boy,’ I said. ‘How long do you need?’

‘About a minute, Sir,’ Felix said.

I waited a bit longer, then started working my hand on him again. This time I paid more attention to the head of his cock, rubbing my thumb over the precome that had gathered, smearing it around, and he dragged his lips across me absently, like he needed the extra layer of sensation.

Some shadows needed to talk while they were consumed. Words spilled from them, they added ‘Sirs’ or ‘Mistresses’ whenever they remembered, and otherwise rambled or talked about what they liked or didn’t like. Felix seemed to sink into a place where he was breath and reaction and broken sounds. And, when he warned me that he was close the second time, the gift of a long, agonised groan when I moved my hand away from his cock.

I edged him because I liked to do it. His orgasm control was impeccable. And he was so willing to suffer in moments like this, it was addictive.

But after the third time I had him trembling and agonised in my hand, I wanted something else.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Time for a position change. Come here.’

I shifted him onto his back, then reached for what I’d put back into my pack, thinking that I was some combination of stupid and daring and arrogant, and I’d never pretended otherwise. He would either hate me or learn to trust me, and I stared at what I held in my hand and then over to him.

‘I went to the Copse a few weeks ago,’ I said, as I lay the flogger gently on Felix’s stomach. At first he didn’t register it, and then his arms came off the bed, he half-sat until I pressed at his chest. The shock of his fear thrummed through him. ‘No, Felix.’

‘But-’

_‘No.’_

His hands hovered in the air, almost over the flogger, like he couldn’t control himself. I sensed he wanted to pick it up and destroy it. With his magic he could likely incinerate it in seconds. I’d seen what he was capable of. He could kill me in a heartbeat, if he wished it. The Automaton of Corybant was almost nothing to him and no one else had defeated that for nearly nine centuries.

‘I thought-’

‘-I know what you thought.’

His voice broke on some syllable, some desperate sound, and I kept my fingers at his chest and kept pushing until he fell limply back onto the mattress. He tipped his head away from me, and I knew he was trying to shut me out, or pretend this wasn’t happening, or maybe reconciling whatever betrayal this was.

I knew he thought it was a trap.

I begged myself not to make a mess of this, but I had confidence in my skills with impact tools, it was one of the things I was known for. Even so, my chest ached, I felt like I was betraying myself. I knew it was only a shred of what he was feeling.

‘As I was saying,’ I said, dragging my hand down his chest until I could thread my fingers through the black soft leather of the tails attached to the flogger. His stomach was hard and stiff beneath my fingers. His cock was going limp. ‘I went back to the Copse to understand more about this, to understand myself better as a flame, to understand you better as a shadow. Ah, Felix, come on now, you have to breathe properly.’

He clenched his jaw, and I picked up the flogger by its handle, then trailed the tails – soft and well-treated – over his flank.

‘You have good reason to hate floggers, scourges, cat o’ nines,’ I continued, my voice even and cadenced. I’d learned this too, Keane in particular could work wonders with his voice. He’d taught me tricks I used every day with most of the people I worked with. ‘I’m not saying you shouldn’t, and I don’t think your reaction is wrong.’

I could tell he was listening when one of his hands straightened out from where it had been curled down into the blanket, like he’d been bracing himself for a heavy blow.

‘No one would look at your back and expect you to like being whipped,’ I said.

I continued to stroke his belly and sides with the flogger, softly and gently.

‘But whips are multi-purpose,’ I said. ‘And it’s a poor flame that doesn’t understand the full spectrum of their use, a poorer one who dismisses the full spectrum as beneath him. I don’t expect you to know any different, but I think it’s important that you learn that there _is_ a difference.’

I let the tails fall over his neck gently, then trailed them down until they reached his cock – limp again, how his balls must be aching – and watched them spill blackly and boldly over his skin. I repeated the gesture several more times, and finally something seemed to click inside him and his next breath was deeper. His breaths were still shallow and fast, but I could see his chest moving properly now, the pulse fluttering in his neck wasn’t so worrying.

‘There are wars you fight out in the field,’ I said, suspecting he needed something to listen to that wasn’t whatever dreck was spiralling inside his mind. ‘And then there’s the wars you fight right here. Our philosophy – that of shadows and flames – we took it from the Mulkists and refined it. You knew that, didn’t you? That the terms started with the Mulkist warlocks?’

Felix was silent for a time, then nodded. I continued to stroke him with the flogger, neck to cock, up and down, and his shoulders sagged to the bed. I wanted to credit myself with his relaxation, but I wasn’t sure he could sustain that level of tension for that long.

‘The Copse wasn’t the first society to take those concepts and turn them to this kind of play, but it was the first to care so deeply about the philosophy of it. To marry responsibility to the action, so that we wouldn’t just be torturer and victim, or slaver and slave.’

I wrapped my hand around his cock again, just as the tails brushed over it, and then I began carefully jacking him off, leaving the tails there on his sensitive, thin skin. I teased his arousal back to the surface and he whimpered, then made a low, lost sound, as though I was being unfair, turning something monstrous to something that felt good.

‘I regret to say that Keane first saw my potential as a flame on the battlefield, you can imagine how sadism might look out there.’

I tried not to think about it, but had the benefit of knowing that many men turn into beasts when they only have a sharp bit of metal in their hands to defend themselves against enemies that have cut down their loved ones and bite into their country.

‘Or maybe you can’t, since you say you haven’t seen war,’ I said.

I moved the flogger down to his thighs, gently stroking over his knees, along the insides, and then shifted until I could work his cock and do full body strokes that now moved all the way up over his face, long black tails of leather dragging through his hair.

His mouth opened, his feet shifted, pressing down into the blankets for a few seconds, before settling.

I took my time, drawing it out, because even boredom taught him something about what was happening now, instead of terror. And if I wanted impeccable control over his fear, I had to know how to diffuse it.

He was hard again when I was finally able to lift the flogger and bring it down – gently, too gently to be called a true strike – over his belly. He gasped, stiffened like he wasn’t sure if I’d really hurt him or not, and then frowned.

I went back to the soft strokes for a while, then lifted my hand and brought the flogger down again, hardly any sound coming from the falling tails.

‘Just like this,’ I said. ‘I hope you’re not expecting much more, or you’re going to be disappointed.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ he said, his voice strained, but heavier than before, almost drugged.

My hand nearly paused while carefully jacking off his cock.

‘Felix, I’d like you to tell me something you’ve liked about tonight so far.’

I stared hard at him. I _thought_ I’d gotten him to this point last time, but maybe I hadn’t. But I also _hadn’t_ expected to get him to this point tonight, either. And I wondered what it was. That I was talking to him? The caresses? The gentleness after the fear?

‘Mm. It’s rather not…what I expected, Sir.’ His voice was nearly slurred.

‘And you’ve liked that?’

‘I think so, Sir.’

I risked bringing the flogger down a little harder, this time across his chest. The faintest blush of red followed, and he didn’t tense at all from the mark I’d left upon him. His hips tilted up into my hand, his mouth open now. I was certain if I could see his eyes they’d be dazed, unseeing.

‘And this?’ I said, striking him again, catching his nipple and watching him hiss. ‘This isn’t terrifying you?’

‘Nnhh.’ He looked confused for a moment. ‘It’s… No, I don’t think so, Sir.’

I was proud of myself. But more than that, I was so proud of him. And I thought he truly was lightstruck, after all, and marvelled at it.

By the time his chest was flushed through, blood risen to the surface, he’d started arching up for the strokes. None of them were hard or painful, but I suspected there might be a faint sting on the end of them. He showed no indication that it was frightening, and his breaths were deep and shaking, one of his hands tangled up in his own hair, the other moving restlessly over the bed.

I had planned for our play to last for hours, but I couldn’t wait any longer to fuck him, and so – with a flame’s prerogative – I didn’t. A short pause to find lubricant, he cried out when I let go of his cock, and I placated him by dragging the flogger over it and became distracted watching him arch into it like it was a friend and not a foe. Then, bringing myself back to the task at hand, I prodded slick fingers between his ass cheeks, and he spread his legs smoothly, easily.

As always, I was careful to breach him. One didn’t forget about that scar tissue in a hurry. But he was all too eager, and when I grasped his cock in one hand – flogger tails and all – and had three fingers deep inside of him, he made a strangled sound and then thumped the bed hard with the heel of his palm.

‘Wait, wait, _wait,_ ’ he breathed, the words scrambling on top of each other as he kept repeating them, the occasional ‘Sir’ thrown in. I was already letting go of his cock, realised how close he’d been to coming.

‘Oh, _darling_ ,’ I purred, pleased.

He shook his head, threw his hands over his face and panted.

I didn’t touch his cock at all when I pressed into him with my own, and he gulped down air and then reached down and touched the flogger where it rested quiescent on his belly. I wondered if he was checking if it was real, or if he thought maybe there was something about it that made it less painful than the others. No, even a single-tail coarse whip could be used for sensual pleasure if one just used half their brain.

I picked up the flogger again and struck low on his belly – close to his leaking cock – as I fucked into him, and he cried out hoarsely, clenched around me. I couldn’t help but groan.

‘You can come whenever you like, my little rabbit,’ I said.

And so it wasn’t that much later when he came on my cock, the flogger falling lightly over his, and I could have crowed in satisfaction. I fucked him through his trembling, violent orgasm, and then dropped the flogger and grabbed his leg – the one with the uninjured calf – and forced it to stretch up to my shoulder, getting a better angle for myself. He grunted, then hissed as I grasped a handful of his hair with my other hand and pulled his head until I could kiss him, biting his lips, watching as he collapsed back to the bed when I let go.

I took my time in the hot, slick heat of him, liking that he was too sensitive to really enjoy it, smug and burning up with my own arousal until I let it consume me in the same way I’d let it consume him. I came hard and deeply inside him, one hand around his neck, the other grasping his thigh and keeping it right where I wanted it. He moaned softly as I came, in relief or appreciation or maybe both.

I pulled out at once, letting his leg drop, and picked up the flogger, and while he gleamed with sweat by the firelight in his room, I struck him once, a broad diagonal stroke across his chest and belly. He jerked, hummed softly, and then went back to that laxness. I wanted to shake him, to pull the blindfold off and say: _See? See what it can be like when you trust me?_

Instead, I put all the tools I’d taken out of the bag near the foot of his bed, where he wasn’t likely to kick them accidentally. I knelt beside him for a while, but his breathing was turning sleep-slow, and I didn’t think he’d panic if I went into his bathroom. I eased off the bed carefully and his breathing didn’t change. When I found a hand-cloth in his bathroom, waiting for the tap to give me hot water, I looked out to check on him and his chest rose and fell with an easy slowness.

I came back and he roused only a little while I wiped the sweat off him.

‘Be easy, Felix, I’m so pleased with you.’

He hardly reacted. By the time I was wiping his come off his belly and his cock, he was asleep, and I doubted very much at all would have woken him. But even though the scene wasn’t a physical trial compared to some, I’d put him through an emotional ringer. And if I was right, he’d been lightstruck for a good proportion of it, which would bring its own exhaustion.

After I was done cleaning him, I went back to the bathroom and cleaned myself off quickly. I stared yearningly at his shower, but I didn’t want to risk it. I was determined to be much better at illuminating him back to safety. That was something I _was_ rusty at it, and he didn’t deserve to suffer for my lack.

Once I was at the bed, fighting my own desire to sleep off a good orgasm, I looked over the mouth gag that Keane had given me. None of the prongs had any jags or nasty metal spurs on them, so I concluded I’d been too rough, and Felix’s gums were sensitive or thinner than I’d thought. The flogger had ejaculate on it, so I’d have to give that over to Wyatt for a good clean – Lady knew his ability to throw himself into odd tasks was unparalleled, even compared to Roderick – and the blindfold with its spikes needed cleaning too.

I put the used equipment into a black cotton bag, zipped it up and put that into the larger pack, and placed that beside the bed.

I picked up the blanket that was on the floor, shook it out and laid it over Felix. I hesitated over the blindfold, then decided to leave it on. After that I stole some of his blanket for myself and let myself drift into the kind of doze I would have found while out in the field, waiting for an attack and needing at least some measure of alertness.

*

He woke a few hours later, a soft muffled sound drawing me out of my own rest. I placed a hand on his chest, under the blanket. Even now, the skin was warmer than usual after I’d flogged him. The strikes may have been gentle, but there had been many of them, and I’d increased the pressure towards the end.

‘You’re on your bed,’ I said. ‘Do you know where you are?’

‘Grimglass,’ he said, and then belatedly he added: ‘Sir.’

‘Good. I’m going to take the blindfold off.’

I moved my fingers carefully to the knot in the fabric, then turned the blindfold so that I’d have better access to the knot. I eased it off, brushing my thumb across his cheekbone, looking down into one blue eye, one yellow. He blinked up at me muzzily, and then looked around the room like he’d never seen it before.

As I watched, his eyes filmed over with tears, and then he made a sound of disgust and wiped at them before any had spilled. I wasn’t worried. Not yet.

‘It’s normal,’ I said. ‘The emotional response is to be expected.’

His eyes flew back to mine, wide. Maybe he’d thought I was the kind of gentleman to be decorous and not mention his upset. I really wasn’t.

A part of me liked his tears, too. I liked knowing that he couldn’t escape my knowledge of them.

I moved closer to him, rubbing at his shoulder, smoothing my fingers over his throat. ‘I thought for some time there was nothing new I could show you. But I don’t think you knew a flogging could be like that, did you?’

His eyes welled over then, tears falling, and his face started to twist like he was upset. Then, a second later, he shocked me by bursting into laughter.

‘No,’ he said, wiping at his face and staring at me. ‘No, I didn’t. Sir.’

‘The ‘Sirs’ are getting a bit harder, are they?’

‘Well,’ he said. But then he wiped at his face and just looked at me with a strange softness on his face. ‘I suppose they are, Sir. I’m not used to anyone particularly caring what I call them once they’re done with me. They usually pay and leave. I mean no disrespect.’

‘Oh, believe me, I can tell when you do.’

He smiled at me, and it didn’t look forced or fake or catty or bitter. And I knew we weren’t out of the woods yet, and I would need to see this through until the morning. But at least we were here, a place that had seemed like some mythical destination after what happened last time.

‘Now,’ I said. ‘Two rules. The first is that we’re going to sleep. And the second is that when you wake up, you are _not_ to go downstairs without me. Not under any circumstances. I’ll be very disappointed if you do, Felix.’

I knew that was part of the problem last time. He’d woken early, snuck downstairs, and been stuck with his thoughts. That whole morning was doomed as soon as he stepped onto that lift without me and left me in his room.

He blinked at me several times, narrowed his eyes, opened his mouth, and then closed it after a moment.

‘Yes, Sir,’ he said cautiously.

‘Good, let’s get under your covers, and take advantage of this bed, shall we?’

He nodded and we shifted. I watched him, holding the blankets up for him and getting all too much pleasure from tucking us both in. And then I moved close to him, uncaring if he liked it or not, draping one arm over his chest, and one leg over his thigh. He seemed uncomfortable for a moment, then sighed loudly and turned to face me. I watched as his eyes roved over my features with a strong, lively curiosity.

‘You are both everything I’ve ever known, and nothing I’ve ever known before,’ he said.

‘Sir,’ I reminded him, even though his words pleased me.

He rolled his eyes, echoing the word after me with no feeling. This was what I needed to be careful of. He dropped himself back into a strange headspace after the consumption period, as though he was reaching for normalcy, as though he didn’t want me to hold any power over him during this part. But if he didn’t let me, I couldn’t guide him properly, safely. And I had zero faith that he could guide himself after something like this.

‘Felix,’ I said, leaning over him and pressing my mouth to his. ‘In this room, you call me Sir. I know it’s amusing to both of us that you feel no need for it now, but I need you to pretend that you respect me enough to continue to see me as your flame right now.’

He blinked rapidly, and I knew he felt chastened. It was too easy to push him back with words, so I was careful with how I presented them.

‘Of course, Sir,’ he said. This time the word came far more easily, and with far more respect.

‘Good boy,’ I breathed.

He stared at me, and then pressed his lips up the tiniest amount, not quite closing the gap between us. I knew what he was asking for, and offered the comfort he needed.

The kiss evolved until it was messy and eager on his part, controlled and demanding on mine. It gentled over time, and he turned towards me and pressed his forehead to my shoulder.

And then we were both laying down, entangled, and I watched as he fell asleep and wondered what traps the morning might bring. He hated it when I trapped him, but I knew before the day was done, he had plenty of his own that he’d set up for the both of us to fall into.


	11. Dogfight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s note:** Idk if anyone is going to be in the mood for this story given the current global times we find ourselves in, but I’m still in the mood for writing it, so here we are.
> 
> Anyway, we have a chapter plan! Loosely expected to be around 25 chapters in total (if there’s more it’ll be because of porn, lmao), you can expect to see Corbie, Virtuer Ashmead, Thamuris and more going into the future. And this is absolutely a Mildmay and Felix story as much as it’s a Felix and Murtagh story. Because Mildmay and Felix feels, am I right?

_Felix_

_*_

Fragility was the first thing that found me when I woke. A feeling that I’d had after countless nightmares, except I couldn’t remember having any. And then while I was checking my body for its injuries, the events of the evening brightly and bluntly came back with force. The fragility felt somehow less threatening, a fact that didn’t need to be feared. I couldn’t explain it to myself, only that I sagged back into the mattress and lay there with my eyes open, staring into the dimness of my room.

After a few minutes, I thought it might be best to go downstairs and sat up. A warm hand was placed on my forearm and the surprised sound that spilled from my mouth wasn’t at all manly.

‘Good morning,’ Murtagh said gruffly. ‘Do you remember my rules? The ones I put in place at the end of the evening?’

I sat there, body aching, resisting the urge to touch my chest where he’d flogged me the hardest. _Flogged_ me.

Goodness, I’d never been so close to bursting into tears and just begging him for mercy. Even Malkar could get me to do nearly anything just by showing me a whip. And last night I’d not only managed to eventually enjoy being flogged, but I’d come, in part, because of it.

‘Judging by your expression, you don’t remember the rules,’ Murtagh said, half-smiling.

‘You’ll have to give me a minute to catch up on the whole evening, I’m afraid,’ I said, then studied him. The stubble that had grown on his face, that I wanted to rub my palm over. The light in his amber eyes that was knowing and still entirely in control, even this morning.

‘You can have more than a minute,’ Murtagh said. ‘Lie down for me, Felix.’

I started to lean back and then stilled, and the rules came back to me at once. I was to call him Sir while we were in this room, and I wasn’t allowed to go downstairs alone. At the time the rule had been perplexing and I’d given it up as my mind being too addled to comprehend what he was asking me. But now I realised it was still an odd rule, and as I slowly eased back down into the bed, facing him, I raised my eyebrows.

‘Sir,’ I said softly.

‘Ah, so you do remember.’

‘And I’m not to go downstairs on my own?’

‘Actually,’ Murtagh said, grasping my upper arm and pulling me forwards until I was so close to him that I ducked my head so that he didn’t have to smell my breath. ‘I don’t want you going _anywhere_ on your own this morning. And you are to call me Sir, Felix. I know you’re not used to this, and I know you’re used to dealing with this part on your own, but it’s not the way it works here among shadows and flames in Corambis.’

‘Is it not?’ I said. ‘But at the hotel, I seem to recall-’

His hand over my mouth, fingers digging into the skin, and a sigh like he was disappointed or exasperated. An internal flinch in response, and I was abruptly angry at him for not letting me have the space to put my walls back up.

‘Darling,’ he said, and that soothed me. A little. It sounded so different when he said it, compared to when Shannon had, or Malkar, or any of them, really. ‘Be quiet for a few minutes. There’s a good lad.’

I almost bit his palm, but instead I took a long, annoyed breath through my uncovered nose and exhaled slowly. He pressed his lips to the top of my head, and my heart did something strange and alien in my chest, and the fragility I’d been so desperate to dash away returned. Softer and quieter than before.

He said nothing, and I realised how tense my shoulders were, and didn’t want to relax them because he’d realise that whatever he was doing was working. But then, in a burst of amusement, I couldn’t see the point in wanting to spite him by staying tense in the first place, and I relaxed all at once.

I thought he’d take his hand away from my mouth then, but he didn’t. He stayed close, somehow surrounding me, some trick in the positioning of his arm, his head, the way his frame bowed towards me. My eyes were closed when he drew his hand away.

‘May I speak, Sir?’ I said, opening my eyes, easing back to look at him.

He nodded like it was always an option, like he hadn’t just placed his hand over my mouth.

I realised the words I wanted to flippantly say, no longer felt flippant. They were awkward and bitter on my tongue, but I couldn’t swallow them down again either. I didn’t want to reveal my thoughts to him, but before me was a man who had taken me into the depths of terror and then led me out of it boldly with a _flogger._ Like some bizarre spiritual dark night of the soul, some Cymellunar fever dream where the angel that becomes a saviour only does so through the tools that destroyed in the first place.

So I said my words. ‘Edwin Beckett once told me that shadows can’t be raped. His idea of what’s appropriate between shadows and flames seems to be very different to yours, Sir.’

And where I’d wanted the words to tease and unseat him, instead they sounded uncertain. Murtagh was the only person I knew who could make feeling off-balance not entirely loathsome.

His entire expression shifted into a cold, flinty anger he’d never bestowed on me, even in his most disappointed moments in what we did together.

‘What Edwin Beckett knows about shadows and flames could fit into a perforated thimble. It always seems I have more reasons to run him out of Corambis and not less. Did he tell you that when he did the…the magic?’ He sounded disgusted as he said it.

‘No, Sir. He visited me at the Institution, during my short-lived stint there. Came right into my office in the House without an appointment. Likely because he knew he wouldn’t have been given one. We argued about what happened.’

‘And you didn’t kill him? Impressive,’ Murtagh said, sounding almost disapproving that I hadn’t lit him up in flames right there in my office.

‘Well,’ I said, and then realised I didn’t know what else to say.

‘I mean it, Felix. He may have hired you as a shadow, but he treated you as a slave. He was abiding by the Mulkist definitions, which are the crudest.’

‘I would never have expected you to care so much for a philosophical system that revolved around sex. Sir, I daresay you seem more the type to get in, get out, and be done with it.’

‘Oh, _do_ I?’ Murtagh drawled. ‘Even now?’

‘Ah, good point. I’m still trying to reconcile what I knew of you from the Althammara, and what I know of you now, Sir.’

Murtagh yawned, stretched his back and then swiftly wrapped both arms around me in a grip that was so crushing my back popped. When he let me go, I realised he’d done it for no other reason than that he wanted to.

‘So am I,’ he said. ‘So am I, Felix. For a long time I liked the easy path, but it made me a lazy flame. Gisela and Keane have both taken me to task for hiring shadow jezebels instead of cultivating ongoing relationships.’

‘Is that any of their business, Sir?’

Every time I said ‘Sir,’ every time I remembered to say it, I was viscerally reminded that the power differential between us wasn’t gone. I couldn’t decide if I liked that or not. And I knew that Murtagh – for all that he’d backed down from trampling his way through my life – was still controlling, still dominating, still a sadist, still everything I wanted from a flame, but wasn’t sure what to make of it the morning after.

‘They own the Copse,’ Murtagh said. ‘Helped me to learn what I know. Gave it a direction, a channel that wasn’t just war, and just in time. I was very close to becoming addicted to killing people.’

I only half-recollected what he’d said to me the night before while I was panicking over the presence of the flogger and needed his words but couldn’t comprehend them. I kept realising, over and over again, how he’d planned the entire evening, how he’d _known_ and predicted every response of mine. How he’d decided to end it with flogging all along.

‘I don’t like calling you ‘Sir’ the morning after,’ I said. ‘Sir.’ I added.

‘I know,’ Murtagh said, serious now. ‘I’m going to make an observation, and I don’t think you’re going to like it very much.’

I already didn’t like it.

‘I suspect you’ve been abandoned immediately after what happened between yourself and others at best, or left to pull yourself together alone and unsupported and, at worst, left abandoned and shattered because that was what someone intended. You’re one of the most fiercely independent people I’ve ever met, and that makes this complicated even if you didn’t have all of that in the darkness behind you.

‘But I was taught that you – the proverbial you, in this sense, _all_ shadows – are extremely vulnerable after being consumed by a flame. I think one of the reasons things went so badly last time was because you fell back into old patterns, and I shirked my duty in being there for this moment. Will I always make you call me Sir the morning after? Probably not. Am I doing it now because I’m conscious of trying to disrupt a pattern you keep trying to fall into? Yes. Does that make me an ass? Felix, come on now, you’ve met me haven’t you?’

In spite of myself, I laughed. He didn’t force me to confirm any of his assumptions, and I realised that this morning was something he was doing as much for himself, as for me, and it perplexed me.

‘That blindfold with the…needles, where did you get it, Sir? Corambins don’t seem the type.’

‘Ah, that belongs to Keane and he made it himself. It’s not my normal oeuvre.’

I hated how relieved that made me. I was almost sick with the idea that those tools were what we were heading towards, that last night had just been a taste of what to expect in the future. I rolled onto my back, staring at the ceiling. Automatically, my fingers went up to my eyes and touched the eyelids. They felt fine, uninjured, but last night I was certain my sight was being threatened.

‘How’s your mouth? I know the metal gag wounded you.’

‘It’s fine, Sir,’ I said. I poked my tongue into the spot that had bled, and it dully throbbed at the contact and then went back to feeling like nothing at all. It would heal quickly. By the end of the day I doubted I’d notice it again.

‘And are you going to be furious with me, if I tell you that you did well last night?’

‘No, Sir,’ I said.

Shockingly, it was true. I didn’t feel that spike of bitter defensiveness over it. I didn’t feel like I had to prove myself to him, or like he was mocking me, or like he had no idea of how much I could truly take. If anything, I felt like he’d taken the measure of me, and as I laid there, I realised that amongst the sense of fragility, I felt…fine.

Which didn’t seem right.

Murtagh shifted until he could lean an arm on my chest – which was still tender, not all his blows towards the end had been soft – and he stared directly at me. It was like being marked by some large, predatory beast that had already fed. At some point, I’d be consumed entirely, but right now, it was just the calculating stare of a carnivore at ease.

It reminded me of Malkar, but it belonged to Murtagh too. It wasn’t that Murtagh was somehow on a lower tier of Malkar’s umbrella of sadism, he was separate.

‘You watch me like you’re trying to dissect my mind,’ Murtagh said.

‘Says the man who decided to get even closer so he could stare at me, Sir,’ I said drily. ‘But you don’t find me intimidating at all, do you?’

‘It depends on what you mean by intimidating,’ he said. ‘If you mean… do I quail at your sharp words and your sometimes mean-spirited attitude? Then no. After all, hedgehogs are very sweet once you look past the quills.’

I mock-glared at him, and he mock-glared back.

‘But I find the breadth of what I don’t know about you intimidating,’ Murtagh continued. ‘I hate making assumptions or deductions and being completely wrong, finding my rationalising has failed me because I understand so little. I find the fact that it’s tremendously easy to hurt you intimidating. That’s the thing about being what I am. I _want_ to hurt you, so, so badly…’ The way his voice changed, roughened, I began to get hard in response. ‘But I want it to be fully under my control. Last night I think I came the closest to what I’m looking for with you – that first night was a fluke, after all, wasn’t it? – but if you think I wasn’t afraid of making a huge cock up of it all…’

Murtagh laughed and pressed his forehead to my chest. Automatically, I placed my hand on his head, ruffling his short-cropped hair, and felt a languid satisfaction when he relaxed further.

The strangest part of all was that he cared about what he was doing. That his sense of responsibility to me somehow weighed on him so heavily that it directed all of his movements. Yet he wasn’t a faux-sadist. I’d heard and felt the hungry, pain-giving monster that lived within him. I knew that it wouldn’t be the last time he brought a flogger out when he visited. He didn’t flinch at my fear or horror, he drew it out, wanted that too.

I wondered if I betrayed myself by not finding the thought as terrifying as I once did.

‘You’re crueller than I thought you were capable of, Sir,’ I found myself saying. ‘But you balance it with other qualities.’

‘Oh, you don’t have to give me that kind of leeway. Keane once said I’m like a bull loose in an antique shop. I’d never related to anything more, and he intended it as an insult.’

We both laughed, and I felt uncommonly affectionate, tweaking his earlobe, thinking that it had never been this warm between Gideon and I in the mornings towards the end. Months and months of hardship in the mornings, both of us chasing the initial pleasing dream of it all, and reality shattering that image – and us – over and over again.

With Shannon, I’d enjoyed some of those mornings after being fucked, dominated. Shannon could be easily convinced to lay about, and he’d order food from some servant and we’d make a mess of the sheets and often end up fucking again, one or both of us missing meetings. The Mirador in those moments seemed almost perfect. Malkar was out of my life, I was discovering that joy existed beyond the exultance of performing strong magic, and Shannon hadn’t yet begun to hit me because he was so frustrated with my behaviour that he didn’t know what else to do.

‘Tell me something,’ Murtagh said, and I waited, horrified that he’d seen my melancholy and would demand an explanation for the shift in my mood. ‘Is there really a labyrinth beneath the lighthouse?’

‘Beneath this very bed, Sir,’ I said.

Murtagh stared at me, his lips pursing.

‘Sir, do you want to see it?’ A sudden bright flash of excitement at the idea of being able to share it with someone. Despite being exposed to the tides, the mosaics in the labyrinth beneath us were unlike anything I’d ever seen before, even compared to the labyrinth in the Sim. The worst of the noirance and mikkary was gone, the remnants weak. Besides, I sensed that Murtagh was intimidated by magic, and I wanted to show him that it could be cleverly beautiful, not just the rationalist engineering-magic hybridisation he was used to.

‘ _See_ it?’ Murtagh said.

‘Well, yes. I’m probably the only one in Corambis who can give you an educated tour. The tides are out, so we’re in no danger. I would never go down there when the tides were in. And there are mosaics, and murals. Of the labyrinths I’ve encountered, I’ve never seen one that was such an obvious labour of love. It’s fascinating, Sir.’

I pushed upright, taken with the idea. It would be a perfect way to get rid of the memories I now associated with the labyrinth, and I was sure Murtagh would appreciate it. I couldn’t show it to anyone else.

‘There’s truly nothing to be afraid of, Sir,’ I said. ‘It’s safe.’

‘Felix, I don’t know how many times I need to remind you, but you killed _the Automaton of bloody Corybant,_ I’m not sure there’s anything that could exist that you couldn’t deal with. Holy Lady, you disarmed the infernal beast that would have killed Kay.’

‘It would have killed without stopping if that machine had awoken, Sir,’ I said.

‘All right. I am curious. Show me this labyrinth so I can be even more haunted by the lighthouse. What do I have to lose?’

‘That’s the spirit!’ I mocked his dry delivery. ‘Sir,’ I added.

He shook his head at me and then leaned in, kissing me roughly on the cheek before sliding out of the bed.

‘I’m using your shower first,’ he said, as he walked away.

‘Flame’s privilege, Sir?’ I called after him.

‘I’m the Duke of Murtagh,’ he said loudly. ‘That means something when it comes to who gets first shower.’

‘Of course, Your Grace, how could I forget?’

He turned and scowled at me, and then vanished into the bathroom. I heard the taps being turned, the shower starting. I stared at the bathroom door for a minute and then drummed my fingers on the bed.

While I knew that Murtagh knew more about the philosophies of flames and shadows than most, I’d never assumed he knew more than me about the business of sadists and masochists. After all, I’d been both. I’d been hurt in more ways than he knew existed, given how many of them could be magically inflicted by Malkar’s hands. I knew more about the filthy wants of men in brothels, and how little they had to pay to destroy a boy, night after night, until Lorenzo could only sell me to the clients who wanted the broken one for a weekend.

He didn’t know as much about depravity as I did, but he’d been as masterful last night as any Virtuer might be in their chosen field of thaumaturgy. And, with the eagerness typical of any wizard wanting to learn something new, I found – for the first time – that my need to know more thoroughly trumped my fears.

*

The lift rumbled to a halt on the ground floor, and Murtagh turned towards the kitchen. I placed a hand on his arm to stop him.

‘This way,’ I said, enjoying the fact that I no longer had to call him Sir. ‘It’s down towards Walsh’s room.’

‘The entrance is in the lighthouse?’ Murtagh said.

It was probably wrong of me to enjoy his discomfort so much. I didn’t care.

‘The doorway is warded. No one can go in by accident.’

‘Wait,’ Murtagh said, when we reached the black, oily-looking door. ‘Here? Lady, I think I remember Clo- I remember…this corridor from my childhood.’

_Clovis._ He’d never mentioned his brother once in my presence. No one talked about him. To this day I wouldn’t have known he existed if it wasn’t for Walsh mentioning it in passing and then telling me it was none of my business when I’d asked about him.

‘We don’t have to go,’ I said reluctantly.

‘No,’ Murtagh said. ‘I trust you.’

I wondered if he should. I wondered if he knew how much of a gift those three words were.

I walked up to the door and heard the sound of Mildmay shifting in the kitchen, and then as I pressed my hand to the door, connecting with the ward in order to undo it, I heard the sound of his cane – Jashuki – rapidly thumping towards us.

‘The _fuck_ do you think you’re doing?’ Mildmay said, unnerved and horrified and making me abruptly stubborn in my own anger. This didn’t have anything to do with him.

‘I’m going to show Murtagh the labyrinth.’

‘Powers and saints, you _ain’t_.’

‘And you’re going to stop me how, exactly? Look around the hallway, Mildmay. You can look to the lift even, if you want. There’s no longer huge pieces of metal everywhere, so this can’t possibly end like it did last time.’

‘Sacred bleeding fuck, did he fuck the rest of your brains out? You nearly _died,_ Felix.’

I stood there, the blood draining from my face in a combination of outrage and shock. The anger that kicked up then was so intense it stole the air from my chest. I hadn’t felt like this towards him since the Mirador.

I opened my mouth, not knowing what I was going to say, only sure that it would flay him alive for even daring to speak that way to me, but he tore ahead, stepping forwards on his cane and passing Murtagh to stare up at me.

‘I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think is gonna happen, you ain’t going down there ever again.’

‘It’s simply darling that you think you could stop me? Don’t forget that the only reason you get to live here in this lowbrow idea of _paradise_ that I’m sure is very meaningful to _you,_ is because they needed a Virtuer here in the first place.’

Mildmay stared at me, then his face twisted into an ugly expression I hadn’t seen since he’d found out I’d gone down to the labyrinth in the first place. It felt like a blow to see it again. Fear galloped alongside my fury. I couldn’t stand it when he was angry at me.

‘That so? I mean, _maybe_ that’s how we ended up here, or maybe it’s because you fucking got us exiled from Melusine, and then got us exiled _again_ just when shit was going great for the both of us _._ You got a lot of practice at fucking up both our lives, don’t think I’m gonna sit back all idle and watch you keep at it for fun.’

Murtagh shifted, and I started to turn, horrified that he was still here witnessing _this,_ but Mildmay wasn’t done.

‘You know what?’ He made a low sound, his version of a scornful laugh. ‘You try and go down there then with that leg of yours. See how you like it. You think you’re gonna make it down one flight of them stairs, fucked as you are?’

I hadn’t even thought of it. Walking down gentle slopes was painful enough, I hadn’t even considered – not once, not in the two years that had passed – that I wouldn’t be able to descend those stairs. And while my mind raced ahead on that, I stuck firm in my anger, cornered and confused, because it used to be so much easier to make Mildmay stop.

‘But Mildmay, darling, you managed all of those staircases just fine back at the Mirador, and your leg is far worse than mine.’

‘I swear by all the powers, Felix, you’ll have to fucking knock me out before I’ll let you go down there.’ He stepped up to me, so close that once upon a time I might have struggled to push away the resulting lust, but now I had to plant my feet and resist the urge to step back. ‘And it don’t half matter, because I’ll knock you out before you even-’

‘All right,’ Murtagh said firmly, and then he placed a strong hand on my chest and pushed me several steps backwards and stood between us, both of his hands out like he wasn’t sure if we were about to start physically fighting each other. ‘I’ve seen tamer dogfights. Is this the way you talk to each other?’

Mildmay, typically, said nothing. I found myself without a single word to say.

‘Felix,’ Murtagh said. ‘You told me that you got your injury from tripping on a piece of metal. That’s obviously not the whole story.’

Mildmay gave me a derisive look, and then just shook his head like he didn’t expect anything better from me. But as he kept looking at me, his expression abruptly changed, turned into something almost pained and desperate. I couldn’t look at him.

‘The labyrinth had an excess of mikkary in it,’ I said stiffly, looking somewhere past Murtagh so that I didn’t have to look at Mildmay at all. ‘Dead people were sacrificed to activate and maintain the energy, and I know that not all magicians here are sensitive to that, but I am. It was affecting my sleep, and I knew it would need to be dealt with eventually, and I am confident with my skills at dealing with labyrinths these days. So I went down and cleared the lingering dead and other…energies, and left the place in a neutral state. I was tired when I came back upstairs and that was when I tripped.’

‘Didn’t fucking find him until _morning,’_ Mildmay said, his voice ugly, though not quite as angry as before. ‘Bled out and just about dead.’

‘I see,’ Murtagh said.

I risked looking at Mildmay again and then realised I couldn’t do this. I didn’t want to and I didn’t have to. Murtagh wasn’t someone I could shut down just by excoriating him with words, and I wasn’t interested in being held accountable for something that Mildmay had never stopped holding me accountable for in the first place. I’d seen Mildmay’s fear and his rage, heard it, felt it, lived the consequences of it, and wasn’t above realising it had been a mistake to suggest the labyrinth to Murtagh.

I wouldn’t have been able to walk down those stairs anyway. The newfound knowledge shattered something deep inside me, and I didn’t want to know what it was.

I pushed past Murtagh, walked past Mildmay quickly enough that my calf threatened to seize. Murtagh called after me, but I activated the lift before he could reach me.

I’d as good as fled. _Me._ Fleeing instead of taking them both on and emerging triumphant.

I was so, so tired.

Once the elevator landed on my level, I walked into my room over to the desk instead of the bed and sat down slowly in the chair. As I reached down to rub at my calf – fingers trailing up to the painful spot Murtagh had found yesterday afternoon – it occurred to me I’d fallen into a trap of my own making.

The realisation was so abrupt that I felt like I’d been slapped.

For two years, I’d been treating Mildmay as though he were a tarquin. It wasn’t conscious, but at some point I’d started telling myself that his happiness would make me happy. The philosophy of every martyr.

_Your happiness is mine, Sir._

The words were worn down in me on an ancient path, and I’d thought it about Mildmay absently, repeatedly, for two years. I consoled myself with those words. I’d see him happier in Grimglass, happier with his revolving list of partners, happier with Kay, happier with Walsh, and I’d tell myself to be happy. And if I failed to be happy, it meant I had done something wrong, was too poor a martyr, had to work harder to sublimate myself. That was all.

I placed my elbow on the table, my head in my hand, and stared down at a mess of letters towards different correspondents, some half-finished, all unsent.

What if he wasn’t happy? Was I still making a mess of his life, even here? Was there something more I could be doing?

And if I wasn’t supposed to find my happiness through his, how was I supposed to find it? Because it wasn’t here. Grimglass held so little of what I wanted. I did, genuinely, need for Mildmay to feel more at home somewhere, and he did seem to like it here. But beyond that…

I hated the sea. I hated the windy coastal cliffs that tempted me to the edge. They even said there was a labyrinth out in the very waters, and sometimes I imagined it calling me onto the rocks.

I heard the lift being activated and sat straighter. A couple of minutes later, Murtagh walked in, a grim expression on his face. He’d been down there long enough that he hadn’t followed me immediately. I wondered what he and Mildmay had talked about.

‘He’s scared for you,’ Murtagh said finally.

‘I’m not calling you Sir,’ I said tiredly. ‘Not now.’

Murtagh waved a hand, then grimaced. ‘Why didn’t you tell me the whole story?’

I stared at him. Was he so surprised that I hadn’t? And he must have read it off my face, because he turned aside, then rested a hand on his hip and looked far less angry than I expected. He didn’t even look done with me, like others might. He just looked…thoughtful.

‘Does he always talk to you that way?’ Murtagh said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘And believe me, it’s no worse and far better than how I’ve talked to him.’

‘Yes, Felix, you’ve told me how awful you’ve been to him _multiple_ times, but you’ve never told me that he can talk to you like that.’

‘He hardly ever does. I’d say only two or three times since we’ve come here. And only since the accident, and only ever about the accident.’ I didn’t mention how Mildmay had screamed at me at the St. Grainne river. That was different. ‘If I never mentioned the labyrinth again, it would never happen again. As you said, he’s scared for me. I know that he is. It’s unfortunate you had to see that. As you can see, I have quite a knack of ruining mornings no matter how hard you’re trying.’

Murtagh stared at me for a few seconds more, then started laughing. I couldn’t join him, but I did smile ruefully. I was still reeling at the idea I’d been treating Mildmay as a tarquin. Maybe that’s why it was so much harder to stand my ground around him. I’d brought it up with him a few times in passing, more than two years ago, but I’d dismissed it. There was no part of Mildmay that was a tarquin, he just wasn’t interested in hurting people or controlling them.

Somewhere along the way, I’d given myself the martyr’s mandate around him – his happiness was mine, and my own didn’t matter anyway.

‘Do you want to talk to him?’ Murtagh said. ‘I can wait up here.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I can apologise to him later.’

‘And his apology? When will you get that?’

‘Don’t presume to know us,’ I said sharply. ‘You have no idea how I’ve hurt him in the past, and as you said, he was afraid for me. He’s not wrong. From what I understand, I’m lucky to not be dead.’

‘It doesn’t work that way, Felix,’ Murtagh said. ‘It doesn’t…’

I was curious to hear what he had to say, ready to stand my ground, but something shifted on his face and he shook his head.

‘I made a promise to myself that you would tell me things when you felt comfortable, unless it’s absolutely necessary for me to know the information. And as much as I hate to say it, this isn’t absolutely necessary for me to know. But I think it might be worth reflecting on all of this in a way that doesn’t cast you as the villain. Neither of you are.’

I had nothing to say in response to that. Murtagh looked back towards the elevator.

‘I’m hungry. Normally I’d send Wyatt out to fetch breakfast in situations like this, but he’s not here. So come on, let’s get breakfast. Mildmay seemed sorry enough that I don’t think we’re going to see a repeat of what happened earlier.’

‘What did you say to him?’ I said suspiciously.

‘Nothing important,’ he said. I realised he had no intention of telling me. ‘Come on, Felix. I’m not above using my station as the Duke to make you come down for breakfast.’

‘You’re insufferable.’

‘Believe me, I know. Isobel tells me nearly every day that I see her. Why, I think she nearly means it fondly now.’

He held out his hand and I stood and took it, and he squeezed it gently.

When we got to the kitchen, Mildmay had gone out. His boots and travel coat were gone. I sighed in a mixture of relief and exhaustion. Murtagh pulled a chair out for me and pointed at it, indicating I should sit. I didn’t see the point in fighting him, Mildmay’s words and my own realisation about how I’d been treating myself as a martyr to his non-existent tarquin brought its own exhaustion, even as the events of the night before had left me feeling worn.

Murtagh busied himself with breakfast, and after a while I turned to him. ‘What do you think of the phrase ‘your happiness is my own’ when you hear it from a shadow?’

‘It depends on the shadow,’ Murtagh said. ‘You said it to me the first time we did anything here. But while it’s not uncommon for shadows to gain great pleasure from service, or pleasing their flames, that complete subsuming of the self is dangerous. Gisela’s written about the concept of it, something along the lines of…you see the most extreme versions of it in people that don’t know how to generate their own happiness, so they need the flame’s.’

‘Oh.’ I frowned. ‘She _wrote_ about all of this?’

‘Well, she’s also a publisher, and runs a publishing house. Kora? I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. But yes she’s written a fair amount of material, most of it in the Copse library.’

‘She runs the Kora publishing house?’ I said. I’d heard of Kora. I’d seen its little symbol in a few of the books Mildmay had, and in one of my own, a volume on Corambis botany that somehow didn’t cover a large tract of Corambis, including Grimglass. I still thought that if it only referred to the botany of _Esmer,_ it should say so.

‘You’d like her, I think.’ Murtagh said. ‘Anyway, to get back to what you were asking, it’s complicated. A shadow that puts a flame’s pleasure before their own is very naturally considered a shadow, but that doesn’t mean it’s always healthy or even called for. Is this about what we did last night? My asking you to choose between options?’

‘Somewhat.’ It was connected. I didn’t think I would have realised just how many of my own choices I’d taken away from myself when I was around Mildmay, if it wasn’t for Murtagh drawing my attention to just how much I hated being given choices in the first place, especially around a tarquin or flame. ‘I think…’

Was I really going to tell him? I watched as he brought over two plates of bread, two jars of preserves, a knob of butter on its own little saucer, in two trips. After that, two cups of coffee followed. He never seemed to begrudge fetching the food for me even if he was – as he liked to remind me – the Duke of Murtagh.

‘I think I’ve been pretending to myself that Mildmay is a tarquin, and that his happiness is all that matters.’

Murtagh reached for the butter knife and took a piece of my bread, buttering it and passing it back to me. I took it automatically, waiting for his judgement.

‘You realised that today, did you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you want my advice?’

‘Oh? You’re used to giving advice in situations like this, are you?’ I said, raising an eyebrow at him. He smiled at me, and put so much jam on his bread I almost asked him why he bothered with the bread.

‘All the time. Can’t tell you how many half-wild wizards treat their brothers as tarquins or flames. I’m dealing with it at least once a week.’

I laughed in spite of myself, and he bit into the bread and immediately got jam on his stubble. He wiped it off with his thumb and shook his head.

‘I don’t think it’s only shadows or martyrs that do that,’ Murtagh said. ‘It happens with family sometimes. No one gives you a guidebook or a manual, and I get the sense that you both started with less of one than the nothing that most of us get. If your foundation was built on being a martyr, and being hurt by others and expected to put up with it, which – from what you’ve told me – it was, then why wouldn’t you eventually apply some of those beliefs to him? I don’t think it’s healthy or ideal, but show me a healthy and ideal family. Go on. Just one.’

I ate absently, thinking it over.

‘The fact is,’ Murtagh said, ‘you’ve realised it now. That’s when you can do something about it. And if you want to, you will.’

‘You make it sound easy.’

‘It’s not,’ he said, pinning me with a look. ‘I think you know that I have my own reservations about how you’ll use caring about my happiness to avoid communicating with me. Maybe it’s a way you’ve been able to avoid communicating with him.’

I didn’t like that at all. It resonated far too strongly.

‘Goodness! Why aren’t we focusing on eating?’

Murtagh took a huge bite of his second piece of jam-saturated bread and it seemed to be the end of the conversation, because a couple of minutes later he was asking me about who provided our food supplies, and how often, and if we were happy with the arrangements here.

It wasn’t how I was used to conversations about personal subjects going at all, and it reminded me of Thamuris. I missed him deeply, and hadn’t seen him in well over a year. Which was entirely my fault. Thamuris had the knack of knowing when to step back from a painful subject. To him it came so naturally, it was hard to forget what a gift it was until I spoke with someone else who would suddenly need to know everything about a certain aspect of my life, without paying attention to whether I wanted them to know everything in the first place.

Mildmay’s words hammered around in my mind, and I reached down to my calf without thinking, feeling the scar.

He was right. The injury just about ensured I would never see the inside of another labyrinth again – at least, not any of the ones at the bottom of stairs, which most of them were.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but Murtagh turned the subject to political matters, and I let myself be absorbed by them, desperate to escape the revelations the morning had brought with it.


	12. Transgressions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** Wouldn’t it be nice if Murtagh was good and behaved himself all the time? I mean, that’s the world I’d like to live in, but sadly we live in this world, where he’s an absolute terror (and I love him). (Tag added: Suicidal ideation, frankly it fits Felix, but it fits another character too).
> 
> Hope y’all are hanging in there, during these rough times. Also thank you all so much for your comments! They definitely helped with getting this chapter up faster than usual! <3

_Murtagh_

*

Before I left Grimglass, I decided enough was enough, and someone had to have a chat to Julian about his dismal lifestyle habits. After spending lunch with an oblivious Kay and a less oblivious Vanessa – she was definitely wondering why I’d been visiting Grimglass more often and not spending my time with them – I determined that Julian would likely be at the tavern. It was early afternoon, Lady’s sake.

As I headed out, Amice – one of their house servants – ran out after me and then stood nervously by my horse.

‘Your Grace, I’m sorry, but he doesn’t mean to be this way.’

‘Then I’ll help him, won’t I?’ I said.

Amice’s eyes widened. He was a pretty lad, though if I was being indulgent, he had nothing on Felix. But then, few did. It turned out I had a compulsion to subdue fiery, wild, feral creatures and the doe-eyed sweetness of the younger ones no longer appealed to me in the same way.

I was tired, too tired to bother with thinking about the mess that was Mildmay’s and Felix’s relationship. Too tired to bother with Felix telling me he thought of Mildmay as a _tarquin._

Amice must have seen something on my face, and his hands fluttered at his sides. ‘Your Grace, please… please don’t be cruel to him. He’s so soft-hearted.’

‘If being soft to Julian was the answer, we wouldn’t be in this mess,’ I said, and mounted my horse. She trotted off amiably towards the village square when I directed her, and I didn’t bother looking behind me at Amice. He was moonstruck over Julian. I didn’t understand it. What _was_ Julian’s appeal here?

Likely that he would spread his legs or ass cheeks for anyone who would have him.

I’d hoped that Kay would train him towards the position of Duke, not that Kay had any experience with it, but Kay was a good leader when he wanted to be. Instead, Kay let Julian do whatever he wanted, and what Julian wanted to do in Grimglass was embarrass the entire family.

I found him at a table at the back of the tavern – the bar-staff scrambling to clean up and come to attention as soon as they saw me – Julian’s eyes coyly looking up at a man that must have been twice his age. I walked right up to them and folded my arms.

‘’Scuse you, Sir,’ the man said rudely, before looking up at me. His eyes widened, he half-fell out of his chair, spilled a quarter of his ale and then mumbled an apology before swiftly walking out of the tavern still holding his pint glass as the barkeep shouted after him to return it. Well, at least the man had his priorities in order.

‘Hello, Julian,’ I said, unable to stop the cold smile on my face. ‘A little early isn’t it?’

‘For what?’ he said, and the sulkiness was already there, thick in his voice. ‘Never too early for drinking here.’

‘Did you even go to Our Lady of the White Waters?’

‘Yes,’ he mumbled.

‘Speak clearly,’ I snapped.

‘ _Yes,’_ he said, glaring at me. ‘What are you even doing here, anyway?’

‘As it so happens, I’ve come to bestow my presence upon you. I think it’s about time we had a _chat._ Don’t you?’

Julian didn’t sit straighter, he didn’t mind his manners, he slouched even more in his chair and he rolled his eyes. He behaved like a fourteen year old when he was eighteen. I felt anger spiking and quelled it. I had to convince myself not to pick him up by the scruff of his shirt and haul him out in front of everyone where I could yell at him in the street. That wouldn’t do anything for the Carey reputation either.

Instead, I judged us to be far enough away out of earshot of everyone else – likely why Julian picked this corner in the first place – and slid into the chair that was still warm from the other man who’d occupied it.

‘I hear you’ve been getting tumbled by any man that will have you,’ I said. ‘It’s got to stop.’

‘All right. It’ll stop.’ The insincerity in his voice was plain. I stared at him.

‘Do you think this is a game? The entire Carey name rests upon your shoulders. It’s bad enough that you’re an aethereal, but now you’ve decided to whore yourself out too? Wait, I _do_ beg your pardon, Master Carey, but whores accept money for what they do. And you’re still dependent on _my_ income to survive.’

Those amber eyes shot up to mine, I was surprised by the venom in them. ‘So cast me out then. Disown me.’

Well. This was not the talk between uncle and nephew I had expected, and I took a moment to compose my thoughts. I didn’t think he was joking, or I would have reminded him how difficult it would be for him – except Kay would likely keep him on even if I disowned him – but there was something in his gaze that was wretched. It reminded me of Felix. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. He was not the Julian I remembered.

‘Are you so unhappy here?’ I said.

Julian’s shoulders hunched. ‘No. It’s better than Esmer, isn’t it? Where everyone knows I’m an aethereal and Cyriack’s told everyone at the University anyway.’

‘And how do you know that?’

‘Robin writes to me.’

It made me uncomfortable to think of people knowing about Julian being an aethereal. His ability to see and be possessed by spirits while being unable to control it or use any magic to defend himself made him a candidate for the most extreme kind of madness in Corambis. It was why I’d tucked him away in Grimglass in the first place. Very few people cared about who he was here, they only cared that he lived with the Warden of Grimglass and was a Carey.

‘Julian, you _cannot_ keep on with the way you’re living. Drinking early on Domenica. Already flirting with someone twice your age. Did you even know him?’

‘No. He came in on a boat. They’re some of the best, you know.’

_Dear sweet merciful Lady, I’m going to kill him._

‘If you think this is the last stop for you,’ I said softly, dangerously, ‘you’re mistaken. If you think this is the worst it will be for you, you’re mistaken. Members of the Carey household have gone through far worse to keep the integrity of the Carey name. If you think I won’t take you out of this village and put you where no one will ever find you again, you don’t know me very well.’

I felt sickened saying the words, trying desperately not to think of my older brother. I’d had nothing to do with his forced exile. I’d protested it, even. But that year had taught me plainly that there was nothing that wouldn’t be sacrificed to preserve what it meant to be the Duke of Murtagh. No family member was immune, not even the direct heir. And it made me furious that Julian didn’t take me seriously, because it would destroy us both if he forced my hand. 

‘Oh, do you think it would be better if I killed myself?’ Julian said brightly, drinking half the ale. ‘Would that help?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Horror stirred in my gut.

‘I’m just asking. They’d just blame it on me being an aethereal, wouldn’t they?’

‘Do you think this is a joke?’

‘No,’ Julian said, smiling at me over his glass. ‘But I think _you_ coming here to lecture me about the way I’m living my life is a joke. And I think you coming here to threaten me instead of just making good on those threats is a joke. Why’d it take you so long, _Ferrand?_ I’ve been here for two years, and the way I live my life isn’t a secret to anyone. So is it that you just found out?’

Julian finished the ale and slammed the glass down on the table. The memory I had of the sixteen year old who hated drinking, couldn’t hold his liquor, and was sullen at times but shyly sweet at others was obliterated violently by the cynic who sat before me.

‘I’m exactly where I’m meant to be,’ Julian said. ‘What else do you expect me to do here? We all know I’m not going to be the next Duke. I didn’t want to be the Duke of Murtagh _anyway._ But do you really see me, an aethereal, being appointed to the position? Even you didn’t, that’s why you’ve put me here. Richard’s a much better candidate than I am, you must know that. Vanessa’s grooming him for the role.’

I knew that, but I tried not to think about that aspect of the future as often as possible, perhaps one of my most irresponsible flaws, alongside fucking Felix on a semi-regular basis.

‘So you’re happy are you? Living this way?’ I asked.

‘It passes the time.’

‘I mean it, Julian, you do not want me to have to talk about this with you again.’

‘Okay, Uncle. Was nice chatting with you though. It’s been a while.’

The urge to slap him in the tavern was increasing. I bit down on it, because I could see the child behind those goading eyes and realised I’d neglected him, and severely. He went from being in the Carey House with Isobel, enmeshed in the culture of Esmer, to being shuttled away from his friends and the family he knew, to Grimglass. I took a slow breath, because it wouldn’t do for me to point out that I could tell he missed me, and he missed talking to me. There was only so much humiliation he could take.

I leaned back in my chair and watched him, and then signalled to the barkeep for another two ales. Julian’s eyes widened, and he straightened then, eyes narrowing in suspicion. For the first time since I’d arrived, he looked a bit more like the lad he used to be. And when the barkeep served us both a well-poured ale, Julian didn’t reach for the handle of the pint.

I almost told him that he shouldn’t joke about killing himself, but I didn’t want to hear him confirm that it wasn’t a joke at all. I thought of Amice warning me that he was soft-hearted.

‘Amice is very worried about you.’

‘Amice should mind his own business,’ Julian said. I was surprised to see his cheeks and ears flush.

‘It looks like he’s right to be worried.’

Julian reached out for the handle of the pint, then let it go again. Eventually he took his hands off the table and rested them in his lap and looked off into the distance. It was easier to study his face then.

He’d matured into a lean, sharp-looking boy. He’d always been skinny, but his eyes had been soft. But he’d changed over the past two years, and there was something steely in his expression, even though it was obvious he was lost. So he had the Carey determination in his blood, he was just pushing it all in the wrong direction. My father would have seasoned him with war, as he did with me, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that to Julian.

‘I could have stayed to get my qualification,’ Julian said. ‘I could have stayed. I would have avoided Cyriack and the rest. I wouldn’t have gone to the Institution. They didn’t want me there anyway, afterwards. Only Robin writes to me. And I think it’s because of the novelty of writing to someone who is what I am. I bet he tells the others that he’s writing to an aethereal, and they wonder if I’m sane or not.’

This was why I’d been putting the conversation off for two years. I grabbed my ale and drank deeply. I remembered Clovis’ voice and Clovis’ screams. I remembered hearing both, whether he was sane or not, his screams that it was unfair how he was being treated when he was lucid, and screams of torment when he wasn’t. In the end, what he was had broken him utterly.

‘Did you wonder if it was me hearing spirits that was making me this way?’ Julian said. ‘I wonder sometimes.’

‘Do you hear them?’ I was alarmed at the thought.

‘Not really,’ Julian said. ‘Virtuer Harrowgate has told me I have to come to him immediately, if I hear anything. But I’ve only seen him about it once in the last two years, and then he dealt with it, and I didn’t hear anything after that. I still do his exercises to keep my mind quiet. I do them all the time. I avoid the deeper parts of the forest though. Just in case.’

‘I see.’

‘Oh yes, I’m sure you understand,’ Julian said, shaking his head at me.

‘You want to go back to Esmer.’

‘Now?’ Julian said. He smirked. ‘And give up all of this?’

At that, he raised his glass at me in a mock toast, and drank so much of it at once I knew that he was likely very good at sculling entire pints to the applause of others. He wiped foam off his mouth with a practiced thumb, and I tried not to think about what else that mouth was practiced doing.

‘You see,’ Julian said, standing and putting his hand in his pocket, bringing out a handful of coins and slapping them on the counter. ‘I know I’m paying with _your_ money, oh benevolent Uncle of mine, but we can pretend, can’t we?’

‘Julian, we’re not done.’

‘My mark’s hopefully still outside waiting for me.’

_‘Julian.’_

‘Your Grace,’ Julian said, winking at me, before walking out of the tavern. I followed shortly afterwards, and he was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the man he’d been talking to. On the steps was an empty ale glass left to be picked up by a member of the staff.

 _Well,_ I thought. _That went terribly._

In the end I walked out and rode back to Kay’s. I left a message with Kay and Vanessa to keep a closer eye on Julian and write to me if they noticed anything disturbing about his behaviour. After that, I organised getting back to Esmer and was glad Wyatt wasn’t there to do all of it for me. I needed to distract myself from the expression on Julian’s face when he’d asked if it would help if he killed himself.

He’d inherited the Carey stubbornness, but I couldn’t wrap my head around what he was doing with it.

The ache in my chest was like I’d taken several punches, and I hurt on the entire journey home, deeply annoyed that I couldn’t simply bask in the afterglow of what I’d achieved with Felix.

*

Mercoledy morning, I sat in my office going over paperwork. A suggestion from the Corambin Railway Company to run a train underground through the Perblanches, which I laughed over until I realised they were serious. Clearly they were trying to avoid running rail through Caloxa. Apparently the next war we were going to fight was one that had Caloxan civilians pitting themselves against the railway workers.

Given the Company had petitioned to run a railway through the Forest of Nauleverer when it was at its worst, I didn’t think anything could spook them. But maybe they were getting tired of war on their tracks.

An urgent request to find more glass-quality sand written from a united front of both the Institution and the University to be used for minisculiums and similar items, because they didn’t want to mine it out of the ocean floor, and apparently my soldiers were better off fetching it for them from the shores of Ygres.

I wondered if everyone in Corambis was actually very stupid and I’d never noticed it before.

‘Wyatt,’ I clipped off. ‘Come here.’

He stood from where he’d been going over more correspondence of mine – the kind that could be answered by a secretary.

‘My lord?’

‘Do me a favour, see if you can find me a housekeeper for those two brothers up in Grimglass will you? Someone that will see a time in Grimglass as a blessing rather than a curse. If anyone like that exists.’

‘I think I know just the person, my lord,’ Wyatt said, inclining his head slightly and walking out of the room.

I doubted it. I also ideally wanted it to be someone that Felix and Mildmay wouldn’t be interested in fucking, but I didn’t know Mildmay’s tastes, and I was fairly certain Felix had his hands full with me.

I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. Watching Felix writhe for me under the lashes of the flogger, increasingly needy, even as the strikes began to move from sensual touches to light, stinging pain, was a welcome image.

Intruding into it was the simmering, seething rage I’d witnessed between Mildmay and Felix the following morning, and Felix’s subsequent despair. It had never occurred to me that Mildmay could be nasty. I’d never seen him like that. Around Kay, he was polite, even subservient. He offered information when it was useful and the rest of the time he was silent, or seemed like he just wanted to help. I’d noticed tension between Felix and Mildmay in the past, but nothing that would indicate it could get that bad.

At the very least, a housekeeper would take some of the stress off the both of them. I hoped Wyatt could truly find someone who wanted to be in Grimglass instead of Esmer.

I wondered who I could talk to about Julian, but came up with no candidates at all. Even Intended Godolphin at Our Lady of Mirrors had turned against him since discovering he was an aethereal.

Julian mentioning that Felix had told him he could go to him whenever he wanted for advice on how to deal with his state came back to me.

I didn’t know that I was comfortable talking to Felix about family matters, but it seemed he _was_ the expert.

And that reminded me that I needed to see Virtuer Ashmead on the matter of Felix. I found myself wanting to do that far more than I wanted to tell the Corambin Railway Company to get their act together and just push the damn railway lines through Caloxa, preferably while I was still alive to see it done.

*

John Ashmead’s office always seemed tinier than it was. I’d only been inside it a handful of times, and the towers of books and paperwork made me want to demand that Wyatt sort it out immediately. But I was possessive of Wyatt, good secretaries were hard to find, discreet secretaries who didn’t mind that I enjoyed whipping the absolute life out of becoming men were even harder, and a secretary who seemed eager to procure those men for me? Well. There was a reason Wyatt was paid so handsomely.

‘Your Grace!’ Virtuer Ashmead said, coming around his table and shaking my hand. ‘It’s been some time. Are you here over our request for the sand?’

‘No. You want my soldiers to go to war at a time when we’re trying to negotiate trade talks, just to get sand? Mine it out of the ocean, and I’ll see what I can do in the trade agreement. It will be some months, I can tell you. Ygres makes glass too.’

‘Ah,’ Ashmead said, smiling ruefully. ‘Please, let me organise some refreshments.’

I nodded and turned to some of the books on his table while he walked out to hail the Institution’s secretary. I hoped their coffee was better than it used to be. One of the books appeared to be about Caloxa and labyrinths, and I picked it up, thinking of the labyrinth beneath Grimglass. How eager Felix had been to show me, and how shattered he’d been when he realised his leg wouldn’t allow him to manage the stairs.

But how had he not realised that for two years? Had he never thought of it? Was his denial that far-reaching?

I flicked through the pages of the book, but the language was too jargon-filled to be of much use. These matters were far above me. A topographical map and a number of soldiers to move around it I could understand. An entire section on the true meaning of _verlain_ reminded me far too much of school. I put the book down and sat in one of the stiff-backed chairs.

Ashmead returned, smiling at me. For all that he had such a pleasing mien, his black eyes were always sharp and calculating. I could always rely upon his intelligence, even if I couldn’t always rely upon him for total honesty. He was known to pick diplomacy over the truth, it was why he was the Dean of the Institution.

‘So what brings you here?’

‘I want to talk to you about the future of Felix Harrowgate,’ I said bluntly.

John Ashmead paused, like he hadn’t expected it, and then he nodded and gestured at me to go on.

‘It’s come to my attention that Grimglass isn’t a healthy place for him to spend all his time. He lives like a hermit in that lighthouse, and from what I understand, he sees hardly anyone, neglects to care for himself at times, and dislikes the ocean.’

Ashmead’s expression turned quickly troubled, and I pressed on.

‘Could he not take up some kind of teaching post here, now that everything has died down? He’s relatively well-regarded in Grimglass. And it seems the worst of the judgements have vanished.’

‘Well, he’s no longer here to judge,’ Ashmead said, frowning. ‘Virtuer Wooller, Bullinger, Tandy, the rest… The Circle would never be receptive to him coming back to the Institution. Don’t misunderstand me, Your Grace, I would have him back in a heartbeat. He’s one of the sharpest out there, and has one of the most curious intellects I’ve ever seen, and even our intermittent correspondences have proven useful to our curriculums. I had no idea that things were so difficult for him in Grimglass, he’s never said.’

At that moment, a servant came in with a tray of coffee and biscuits of the kind that were a tad fancier than those usually brought out for guests. She poured the coffee for both of us and I took the cup, refusing cream or sugar, and sipped at the bitter brew immediately. As she left, I realised the coffee was marginally better than it used to be. Perhaps I was growing more tolerant.

‘I don’t think he’s looking to rock the boat,’ I said. ‘He hasn’t sent me here. I’m here of my own volition.’

‘Ah.’ A delicate pause. ‘You’re concerned about him, are you? Personally concerned?’

I stared at Ashmead for a time. I had to be careful. ‘So his coming back to the Institution is impossible?’

Ashmead nodded, and then something crafty entered his eyes. ‘There is a possible loophole.’

‘Holy Lady, just tell me instead of teasing me. I’m not one of your shadows at the Copse you know.’

His cheeks didn’t even flush. My words were a partial warning, and a partial offering of information. John Ashmead used to visit the Copse far more regularly than he did these days, but I was perfectly aware of the kind of flame he was, and his concern for Felix was curious. It seemed far more than professional. I wanted him to know where we stood, and I wanted him to be aware that I knew some of his secrets, even as he seemed to be divining mine.

‘Of course,’ Ashmead said smoothly. ‘The thing is, the Institution doesn’t hold full sway over the Women’s College. Of course you know the primary reason we can’t have him teach at the Institution isn’t that his magic can be terrifying, but that he’s inclined towards men in _that_ way and too many parents will worry that he has designs on the male students. Of course, having met Felix, I don’t quite think that’s where his interest lies, do you?’

An arched eyebrow, and Ashmead knew I was here as a flame trying to help a shadow, and not a Duke trying to help a member of his Duchy. I trusted in his discretion, but I didn’t like that he’d put it together so quickly. I had to be careful who I spoke to about Felix in the future, though Ashmead being a flame made him more astute than usual.

‘Tell me more about the Women’s College,’ I said.

‘Yes, of course. Well, Hastings is the Dean, as you know, so we’d need to loop him in on this. And Felix would have to _want_ to come back, and he’d have to want to teach in the face of a great deal of controversy, and he’d have to want to teach women. But Felix teaching young women is hardly going to bother near as many parents. Not only that, but the Circle cannot cast him out because of the threat he poses to men, if he’s not allowed to formally teach them.’

‘Informally?’

‘Anyone who could get over the weak-minded humiliation at being taught at a Women’s College would be welcome in his classes. Perhaps, ah, after a term has gone by to gauge how much controversy falls out.’

‘It’s Felix, there’s going to be some,’ I said. ‘He walks down a street taller than the rest of the Corambins and everyone takes notice.’

‘Even among some of the Virtuers, he’s something of a god,’ Ashmead said. ‘His approach to theory is avant garde and fascinating, as though he’s attenuated himself to no rules at all; which isn’t true, but definitely how it seems. But it’s his raw power that intimidates them most. They know it would be nothing for him to destroy all of them, if he put his mind to it.’

I sighed, thinking it over. Felix teaching young women at the Women’s College didn’t seem the best use of his mind, but it would get him back in Esmer, and if he did it for only a term, maybe a semester… That would be half the year that he was away from Grimglass, and could maybe think of it more fondly while he wasn’t there.

‘Does the lighthouse _need_ a Virtuer?’ I said.

‘It’s gone without for a long time,’ Ashmead said. ‘And Felix has sent me diagrams of how he and Mildmay have worked on the lighthouse mechanics themselves, and according to Virtuer Hutchence, there might just be enough magic in the thing to keep it running for centuries now. Like I said, his raw power is like nothing else.’

‘I see.’ Now that I thought about it, I almost never saw Felix use his magic at all. I seemed to recall him using it far more often before Grimglass. He’d made those little flower lights appear in the woods, when he’d seemed to be in an exceptionally good mood, and beyond that, nothing. Was that normal for him? It bothered me that I couldn’t even remember him stocking the fire with it on a cold morning.

‘You’re genuinely worried for him,’ Ashmead said, sitting straighter. ‘Why? What’s wrong?’

‘Grimglass has not been good for his state of mind. Though I suspect _Felix_ is not so good for his own state of mind no matter where he is. But that lighthouse isn’t helping. You know there’s a labyrinth beneath it?’

‘He told me,’ Ashmead said slowly.

‘Did he tell you that he went down there on his own, cleared it of…ah, I think he used the word mikkary, and noirance, and then went upstairs, exhausted, and ended up severely injured, and nearly bled to death? _Then,’_ I continued, ignoring how pale Ashmead’s face was turning, ‘he refused to see any physician about it while conscious, took the stitches out of a wound that goes near from ankle to knee on his own, and – as far as I can tell – would sooner hit someone with a walking stick than use one.’

‘Goodness. I’d hoped…’ He reached up and rubbed at his temples. ‘There were glimpses of this during the inquiry.’

‘Glimpses of what? What did he reveal during the inquiry with the Circle?’

I knew his magic had been bound by the Circle, and Wyatt had informed me at the time it was because of crimes he’d committed with his magic – largely the binding-by-forms he’d cast upon Mildmay and something about a murder – back in Marathat.

‘If I may be blunt,’ Ashmead said. ‘I think you will appreciate this metaphor more than most. Shadows have ever been good at throwing themselves upon the pyre.’

‘He was punishing himself?’ I said.

‘I didn’t see it at first, at least, not immediately. Though I was certain of it by the end. As soon as I’d cast that confounded choke-binding on him. Even hearing about Malkar Gennadion… In retrospect, if he’d genuinely not wanted to be judged, he would never have come to us. He has the magic and the skill to do whatever he wants, Your Grace. The only thing that stops him from being one of the most monstrously powerful magicians of our time is, well, his disposition. But everything that happened during the inquiry is all down in the minutes. All the horrendous details he decided to share with us.’

‘The minutes?’

‘They’re publicly available,’ Ashmead said, waving a hand dismissively. But just as quickly his eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t think it would be wise for you to read them.’

‘If they’re publicly available, it’s no violation of his privacy, is it?’

Ashmead scowled at me. But I felt a bubbling interest. Felix had mentioned a Malkar once, and I’d never forgotten it. In lieu of no longer allowing myself to incessantly badger Felix for answers, there was nothing to stop me from looking at the minutes of a meeting to find them out for myself.

‘With all due respect-’

‘Oh, I don’t need that, John,’ I said, staring at him. ‘You can always say I found out they were public on my own, after all. Wyatt informed me.’

‘It’s not _me_ I’m worried about. You have taken up a duty of care, and it’s your responsibility to-’

‘You’re not Keane or Gisela,’ I said, raising my hand to stop him. ‘And we are not at the Copse.’

‘You brought it up in the first place,’ he said. ‘And I have a duty of care towards him. He is one of my Virtuers, and I laid the choke-binding on him myself. I am fully aware of how zealously he guards his privacy.’

‘Then he shouldn’t have been so open during the trial, should he?’

Ashmead was outraged now, though he wasn’t the kind to shout or yell. I sighed and snapped one of the biscuits in half, eating it. Ashmead’s gaze was heavy upon mine. He was no Duke, but he was the Dean of the University, the head of the Circle, and no quailing personality. I suspected a lecture would have been on its way if I’d been literally anyone else.

‘John,’ I said softly. ‘I still have no idea who Malkar is. After all this time. Don’t think there are some things I should _know,_ for his own safety?’

‘You’ll not talk me into agreeing to this,’ Ashmead said. ‘You’re not going to listen to me anyway.’

‘Well, to take your mind off things, will you talk to Hastings about appointing Felix to the Women’s College? And this works in your favour. If you’re so worried about him, you could keep a better eye on him yourself if he came back to Esmer sometimes, couldn’t you?’

Ashmead gave me an unimpressed stare of the kind I was so used to from Isobel, I almost smiled. But my job wasn’t to be kind or delicate or nice, it was to be the Duke, and in the case of Felix, it was to be his flame as well.

‘We’ll set up a correspondence then, and I will keep you up to date on the developments,’ Ashmead said stiffly.

‘I am trying to help him, you know,’ I said. ‘For all that you have that sour look on your face. Did you have any idea what you were sending him to, when you sent him to Grimglass? There was no conceivable way it would have been good for him.’

‘I thought the quiet and the…’ Ashmead stared off at one of his bookshelves, then looked at me again, wearily. ‘It was the only way we could assure him a decent salary, a place to live, at a time when he would have been cast out. A Virtuer’s salary is generous, and-’

‘He doesn’t use it,’ I said, laughing. ‘There’s no signs of it in that lighthouse.’

‘Of course it occurred to me that it wasn’t an answer on its own, but he’s never asked for anything more. He’s never hinted once that he doesn’t want to be there.’ Ashmead groaned and tipped his head back. ‘Perhaps he wouldn’t, though.’

‘Well, there you are. If it helps, Mildmay is thriving. It’s not a terrible place, of course. It just doesn’t suit Felix to live like a recluse for years at a time.’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Ashmead said. He looked displeased enough that I suspected Ashmead nursed his own attraction to Felix, but was too dutiful to his role as Dean to ever act on it. His loss.

‘I should be going,’ I said, standing. ‘And the Circle minutes are kept where exactly?’

‘Talie will show you,’ Ashmead said, staring up at me. ‘You’re making a mistake.’

‘Then it is mine to make, and you have more than done your due diligence to deter me.’

That seemed to be the end of it, and Ashmead arranged for Talie to show me to the room where the Circle records were kept. I felt Ashmead’s judgement dogging me, even though he wasn’t with me. It was a weight upon my back and shoulders, but I carried it, ignored it, and chose instead to learn something more about Felix.

I sat there with a bound report – thicker than I expected – and hesitated before opening it. But Ashmead was wrong. I had a right to this information, and if it was public, no permission was needed.

It was obvious immediately that the Virtuer who recorded the minutes hadn’t been remotely sympathetic to Felix. Referring to him once by his name, and afterwards always referring to him as ‘the Accused.’

And so I read Felix’s story, as told by Felix’s own words, narrated by someone who didn’t like him.

I learned about thaumaturgy and politics in the Mirador. I learned that the Gideon I’d only heard referred to once, was Felix’s Eusebian magician lover who’d had his tongue cut out, and was then murdered by Isaac Garamond in a horrific manner. And I learned that Felix had murdered Isaac with magic in turn, an act of revenge even though the Mirador would have executed Isaac Garamond for his crime anyway.

I learned that Felix spent two years of his life with Gideon, and that even through the Virtuer’s biased hand, it was clear Felix did love him. A man whose name I’d only heard once, and only because Felix was too dazed to properly monitor what he was saying.

I learned that Felix didn’t hide his tastes for men with the Circle, which caused some controversy, and the swift judgement of the Virtuer who was taking the minutes.

_‘The Accused seems almost proud of his tastes, as though he has never heard of sin in his life, or is determined to make a mockery of those who believe in virtue.’_

I learned that there was a man named Malkar Gennadion, a magician, a monster, a Mulkist, who had acquired Felix as a slave at the age of fourteen, and proceeded to rape and torture him repeatedly to mould him into what he needed him to be. I learned – my hand shaking as I held the page in my hand – that Felix had the obligation de sang, or binding-by-blood cast upon him the way Mulkists used to enslave other magicians here. That very thing that all magicians were terrified of, that Corambis had gone to war with Caloxa over – and _won_ – was the thing that Felix hadn’t been able to escape until he’d figured out how to break the binding himself, years and years later.

And I learned that Malkar had let Felix go, released him into the Mirador like a spy or some military plant – though Felix’s naivete to this motive wasn’t lost on me – only to capture him again when he was older and rape him to destroy a thing called the Virtu. Some magical object integral to the health of the very Mirador itself. I learned that Malkar had cursed Felix in the process, turned him mad, and left him to die.

I learned that Felix cast the binding-by-forms on his brother, even though it was something I knew through Wyatt and rumour. But reading about the actions of ‘the Accused’ was very different to hearing it from Wyatt. And from the details laying inked across the page, the increasing heavy rushing slant in the handwriting, Felix damned himself before any of these Virtuers had a chance.

I learned that Felix was the one who fixed the Virtu, on his own, with no details as to how he’d regained his sanity except for a mention of some Troian sanctuary I’d never heard of before. I learned that Malkar abducted Mildmay and tortured him too, and that Felix blamed himself for it. I learned that Felix murdered Malkar himself.

The Circle had then broken the binding between Mildmay and Felix, and then they’d bound away Felix’s magic, and there was some mention that it was an agonising binding for Felix to experience even though it wasn’t supposed to be painful at all. The Virtuer writing the minutes attributed the pain to Felix’s soul being corrupted, and seemed very satisfied that Felix had suffered for it.

I learned that Felix had been offered a job at the University that very day – speaking volumes to Ashmead’s ability to see through the damning information offered in the report – and that some of the other Virtuers disagreed but couldn’t stop Ashmead from appointing him.

I closed the report soon after and sat there, staring at whorls of wood grain on the table, and knew that Ashmead was right.

I shouldn’t have read this.

‘Too late now!’ I with false cheer announced to the empty room, and stood, leaving the report on the desk.

Malkar’s name rattled around in my head. The knowledge that Felix had been a child prostitute long before Malkar had ever found him, and then Malkar had him, and the report only skimmed the very surface of all of it. I knew that. A man making a report at a trial is different to the years of lived experience. Felix had an entire life before Corambis and I knew nearly none of it. But I thought of how I was his flame, and wondered what role he cast me into. Was I just another Malkar Gennadion to him? Did he even understand the difference yet?

I thought he did.

But did he?

I felt chilled from the inside out as I made my way back to Carey House.


	13. Adelais

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My beta and I were commenting about this story and I said ‘Felix is like Bjork in Hyperballad in this chapter,’ and for anyone who has listened to that song, you’ll…probably know exactly what I mean. (I've added it to the story playlist, lol).
> 
> I've added some new tags mostly around chronic disability, since it's definitely a thing here. This is pretty much the last chapter for Act 1 (in a 2 Act story, or 3 Acts if you squint), so we're kicking off into the plot that will see us through to the end in the next few chapters! Look at me pretending to know what I'm talking about when I just want to write Murtagh railing Felix again *coughs* 
> 
> Hope everyone is hanging in there okay! I'm on day 43 of iso, and drinking a ginger beer, and it definitely feels like autumn, which means we'll get winter soon. :D

_Felix_

*

Weeks passed and I didn’t hear from Murtagh at all. I half-wondered if I’d spooked him, but knew it was more likely he was busy.

Grimglass dragged its heavy cliff-laden head into early summer, and the grassy fields around the lighthouse turned yellow with gentian and daisies, white with anemones, narcissi. Here and there, pale purple sea stock. I took my book on Corambin – Esmer, really – botany and was pleased to note that I was more familiar with the surroundings than I used to be. I contemplated walking down to the woods on my own where Murtagh had taken me, but the weather turned so fast by the lighthouse and I didn’t want to be caught in a sudden storm, unable to run back to shelter.

The realisation of the depths of my injury and all that it had taken from me, cut some deep, hidden thing inside of me. I felt as though I’d bled out all over again for a few days after Murtagh left, avoiding Walsh and Mildmay, which also meant avoiding eating until the hours past midnight.

I didn’t know when I’d changed so profoundly. Before the injury? Afterwards? But I could feel the way I shrunk into myself, and I read over Virtuer Grice’s papers and then went further back to older Virtuers who wrote in dialects I puzzled over and I felt myself twisting into one of them. I was like a tree in the Khloidanikos, but unlike Mildmay’s Perseid tree, I was rotting instead of improving over time.

I thought of the Sybilline and its Dead Tree, and looked over to the bookshelf where I left the box of cards. I avoided them. I didn’t want to read the huphantike in the cards, I didn’t want to see what lay before me.

I knew it was unlike me, yet I couldn’t find a path back to myself. Perhaps the path was back in Esmer city, in the Institution where I’d been teaching. Perhaps the root of it was still in the Mirador. Perhaps it was with Malkar, and I’d never find it again because I’d killed him.

Days bled into each other. Domenica was significant because everyone went to Our Lady of the White Waters. I went downstairs in the morning to look for whatever food might be there, and then wandered out among the fat bumblebees blown this way and that – hither and thither as Grice would put it – among the flowers, in the tempestuous Grimglass winds.

Sometimes I would make my way to the cliff edge and stare out across the choppy waters, gripped in a fist of terror of my own making. My hair snarled into tangles because I never tied it back when I went out on Domenica mornings, caught up in the romance of the image, perhaps. On the cliffs, my hair whipping into my face, I would tell myself to go back. I would tell myself to lean forwards, lean into it, make a choice. I didn’t truly want to die, but I craved the fall nonetheless.

And then I would head back to the lighthouse and go back upstairs and feel crusted in salt and feel hollowed out. Now, I missed Murtagh as well. Missed his hands on me, his forward nature, his honesty, missed his scent, the taste of him on my tongue.

Domenica would turn into Lunedy, then Martedy would follow, then the rest, and it all bled into a single clotted mass of the fire-tinged dimness of my room, the sound of papers being moved as I looked over them, or my quill scratching notes down. Mildmay hardly checked on me these days.

I wanted to be happy that he was happy, but he wasn’t my tarquin.

I wasn’t his martyr, and I wasn’t happy.

I wasn’t sure I ever would be.

*

‘Felix!’ Mildmay shouted from the elevator before he’d even reached my platform. I turned from the table, my hand went up to my hair. Had I even brushed it? What time was it? ‘Felix, you better fucking come down here.’

‘What is it?’ I said, wondering what I’d done wrong now.

‘You gotta come see,’ he said, walking through the door into my room, and then looking around slowly. The bed was unmade, I’d been wearing a lot of the same clothes lately. It wasn’t as though I had an abundance of them anymore, so it didn’t much matter. ‘Powers and Saints, Felix, at least you’ll keep her busy.’

‘Her?’

‘Are you coming or not?’

I cleaned the quill of its ink and put it down on the rest. I could have used a fountain pen, but it wasn’t as though my writing was any more legible with a pen. My fingers could only manage so much dexterity. At least Ashmead seemed able to read my letters and my reports.

I grabbed the red coat from off the bed, shrugging it on, and walked over to Mildmay, ignoring the way his eyes tracked me like they were cataloguing everything wrong with me.

‘You okay?’ Mildmay said.

‘I didn’t expect to be distracted from my work,’ I clipped off.

His eyes narrowed, and I returned that gaze and thought how easy it was to love him, how easy it had been to lust after him until the Clock of Eclipses, which slammed that door shut so hard I still trembled to think about it. But I didn’t want him to worry about me, and even if I wasn’t his martyr, and he wasn’t a tarquin, I was still his older brother. I needed him to be happier than the previous years his Keeper and I had led him through.

On the bottom level of the elevator, I walked towards the living room only to hear the sharp clicking of heels on the slate.

My first impression was one of wiry, short strength. I thought: _There’s a woman not to be trifled with._ She had black, sharp eyes, tan, clear skin, and curly steel grey hair and looked a bit like the school teachers in books that still believed in birching children.

‘So you’re the other one, are you? Well! My name is Adelais and I’m your new housekeeper.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Least you’re more polite than him!’ she said, pointing a finger at Mildmay. ‘I’ve been hired by Your Grace, the Duke of Murtagh, to be a live-in housekeeper. Only to find I’ve got no room appointed and no one’s been expecting me. Well, I shall be sleeping in Walsh’s room until you find me one!’

‘You will not!’ Walsh shouted in his reedy voice from the living room.

‘I will so, you old codger!’ she shouted back. ‘The state of this place! I swear.’

She turned and marched back into the kitchen. I stared at Mildmay in alarm.

‘Yeah,’ Mildmay said, nodding at me soberly. ‘Yeah, did you know about this?’

‘I swear I didn’t.’

‘She ain’t gonna leave,’ Mildmay said. ‘You know, might not be bad to have a housekeeper. But she’s a battleaxe and a half.’

‘She’s terrifying,’ I whispered under my breath, and Mildmay’s eyes smiled at me, while his mouth remained grim as it nearly always did.

We both walked into the kitchen where Walsh was standing with his hands on his hips by the fireplace, and Adelais was going through all of our cupboards and cabinets. She pulled out several jars of herbs, sniffed them and one she looked at in revulsion.

‘Is more mildew than rosemary! Do you even know the difference? _Disgusting_.’

‘She’s not sleeping in my room,’ Walsh said to us.

‘Am not sleeping upstairs if my main job’s to be down here, cooking for you useless bloody bachelors. Make me a new room, then. Bad enough that I have to house poor Langonec in those stables! Holy Lady, that creature deserves better. Lap of luxury he’s been living in, and now he’s here in the draftiest stables known to mankind.’

‘They’re better than they were,’ Walsh said.

It was true, Mildmay and Walsh had been working on the stables for some time. Of course, they could only go so fast, but given the state the stables were in before, they were really markedly better.

I stepped forwards, holding out my hand.

‘I beg your pardon, we haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Felix Harrowgate.’

‘Know who you are,’ she said, turning from another jar of likely mildewy dried herbs to shake my hand with a grip so hard I had to hide a wince. ‘You’re that magician that got famous and then got _so_ famous they put him in a box in Grimglass. I’m Adelais Rightwater, my nephew’s Amice. Do you know him?’

‘Amice!’ I said, carefully and subtly moving my fingers to check they were all sound. ‘Yes, he comes by with groceries now and then. He’s a lovely young man.’

‘Lovely?’ she said, black eyes bright. I sensed a sharp intellect behind that gaze, and if we’d been in the Mirador I would have ignored her if she’d been a servant. Or even, perhaps, fired her for her attitude. Here in Corambis, I’d learned better. ‘Amice? He was a terror as a child. But I’ve missed him. Mister Parsifal Wyatt came and offered me this job, the pay was right, and now I’ll get to see my Amice. Don’t expect I’ll be here all the time at your beck and call! Wyatt said I could go to the town whenever I wanted.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe we need a housekeeper, so-’

Her laughter drowned out the rest of my sentence. She was taller than most Corambins, and I thought she might be half-Ygressine like Corbie. And with her accent, I decided to take a stab in the dark.

‘You’re Bernathan?’ I said tentatively.

Her grin was bright enough to light up the room. ‘Most guess I’m Caloxan, but you’ve got the right of it. I’m Bernathan, born and bred, and proud of it too! Saw you spent time in Bernatha, the best city on the continent. But don’t you distract me, now. Look at you lot. _You_ don’t need a housekeeper?’

She burst into laughter again. And then she placed her hand on her belly like it was rounded and she was planning on laughing jovially for another few minutes. I took a step backwards, and she went back to looking at the herbs.

‘Bad,’ she muttered to herself as the jars clinked into each other. ‘This is bad. By some miracle _this_ is fresh! I brought my _own_ yeast, don’t trust the Grimglass yeast at all. Got some good Bernathan yeast. I bet you’ve all been living on stale bread and Walsh’s idea of stew.’

Mildmay looked at Walsh in sympathy, and Walsh was standing there like he thought it might be a good idea to have a catastrophic heart event in order to never have to deal with Adelais again.

‘The Duke of Murtagh appointed you?’ I said. ‘He didn’t tell any of us.’

‘Maybe he knew you’d say no,’ she said absently, as though that was a perfectly sound reason to invite a fourth person to stay at the lighthouse.

The tingle of irritation turned into a brighter spark of anger, but there was no one to turn it against. I folded my arms. I sensed Mildmay’s gaze on me, and didn’t return it. The last thing Mildmay needed was more ammunition against Murtagh.

‘What are you all doing standing around?’ she exclaimed a minute later. ‘Shouldn’t you be making my cot up about now? Or are you so useless you can’t even do that much?’

It wasn’t until we were all hurrying down the corridor towards Walsh’s room – why I was going, I had no idea – that I realised Adelais was half-housekeeper, half-demon.

I was going to have words with Murtagh the next time I saw him.

*

Despite the trepidation all three of us felt in allowing Adelais into the house – though there wasn’t much ‘allowing’ involved – the days that followed settled into something of a pattern. She rode nearly every morning to the town for fresh bread, eggs and sometimes meat from the butcher. Her coldblood reddish brown monster of a horse, Langonec, was a spirited gelding who much like Adelais didn’t suffer fools, but was good at what he was supposed to be doing.

Adelais acquitted herself as a marvellous housekeeper immediately. She aired and cleaned out the kitchen, provided meals three times a day and less conveniently had a bad habit of using the elevator to remind me that I had to eat. When I explained I had a delicate stomach, I had the singular experience of watching a grey-haired woman stomp her sharp little heeled boot on the floor of my room and shout:

‘You make your stomach delicate, you daft man! If you’re not going to magic yourself a meal, come down, and stoke the fire while you’re at it!’

And then, when I bent before the fire to stoke it with the poker, she slapped her hand on the kitchen counter so sharply I turned and nearly flinched from the force of it.

‘What are you doing it like that for? Don’t you have magic?’

I stared at her. Mildmay stared at her. Walsh had been conspicuously absent, spending most of his days working in the stables for Langonec, who, it seemed, was a prince in horse form judging by the way Adelais talked about him.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘But the annemer way-’

‘Not telling me that you have magic and you’re doing it like that? Can’t you just…?’ She waved her hand towards the fire, then squinted at me. ‘Amice told me you had magic but maybe because you never _eat,_ you’ve lost it all, and-’

‘Excuse me, Ms Rightwater, but if I thought you had a single accurate idea of how thaumaturgy worked I _might_ consider asking you, but I’m not currently on the market for opinions from tired, old-’

‘No magic at all!’ she shouted at me, pointing her finger with such rudeness that I stood, waved my hand at the fire and didn’t bother staying to see the small explosion that followed in the fireplace. Mildmay swore, she shouted, and then – when I was nearly to the elevator – I heard her marching after me.

‘Where’re you going? Food’s nearly on the table.’

I turned and stared at her in horror.

‘Don’t most magicians have better control over their magic? Or were you just making a show to scare me?’ She glared at me. ‘Am not scared.’

‘No? Do you know why I’ve been exiled to Grimglass, then?’

‘You fuck men,’ she said bluntly, then placed her floury hands on her hips. ‘So?’

I nearly told her outright that I’d murdered men with my magic and would do it again, but the sharp way she had of getting to the truth had me standing there longer, trying to think of how to respond. She went on without waiting for an answer.

‘Amice says you don’t even talk to the Holy Lady about it because you’re godless.’

‘Ah,’ I said.

‘Amice thinks you’re quite something.’ She looked me up and down. ‘Don’t know why.’

I didn’t want to concede her any of my amusement, but in that moment I couldn’t hold back the half-smile that quirked. She had a sharpness that reminded me of Corbie. Although Corbie had never been so terrifying.

I was surprised when Adelais’ lips quirked up too, and the spark of fury in her eyes transformed to one of humour.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You must eat. Would please me, Felix. A godless heathen like you needs to stay fed, how else is he going to fight all those little demons off?’

‘How else indeed?’ I said drily.

‘Mind your manners,’ she said, like I was a teenager overstepping my boundaries with her. I had no idea if she had any children, but in that moment I nearly prayed for them. ‘Besides, cry your mercy, but I don’t care that you’re godless.’

‘Really?’ I said sceptically.

‘Really,’ she said, turning on her heel. ‘I fuck women. You’re not the only godless heathen in existence. You’re not _unique._ ’

I stared after her, and it took me too long to remind myself that I was meant to be following her back into the kitchen. The fire crackled merrily in its hearth, and Mildmay – for some reason – seemed in such good spirits that I found myself enjoying the morning despite everything that lay unsaid between us.

*

On Geovedy, Adelais made something called viška pogača, and I realised while eating it that it was one of the few things I missed about Bernatha.

‘Was my specialty,’ she said proudly from the kitchen, as she floured the counter and began working on another batch of dough. She baked so much she often took extras to the Brightmore manor once or twice a week. ‘Stuffed breads. Every Domenica I make a casatiello. You boys could stand to have some more meat on your bones. Pastries too, I can make those. I’ll need to get some ingredients shipped up. His Grace has me paid well enough for that, at least.’

She talked to herself quietly then, going through a list of shopping ingredients. Mildmay ate while reading his book and I tried not to watch him, and did a bad job of it. Something had shifted between us, a tectonic destabilisation that hadn’t repaired itself since I’d thought to take Murtagh down to the labyrinth. We could be civil, but if anything that was the problem. Everything since had been filled with an exceeding politeness and I wish he’d yell at me and tell me why he thought I was being stupid this time, and I still couldn’t get the look on his face out of my head, when he’d half-dared me to go down there with my bad leg.

I looked down at Jashuki, his walking stick, and felt chilled.

‘Should get one,’ Adelais said. ‘Why don’t you have one?’

‘I don’t need it,’ I said, looking at her, even as Mildmay looked sharply at me. But he didn’t say a word, and I felt something caught up in my chest.

He’d known for longer than I had just how injured I’d been. Even now, my calf felt pulled, the muscles tangled up in scar tissue. I sat with the heel a little off the ground, a habit I picked up to ease the strain. Murtagh’s technique of digging in behind the knee hurt fiercely, but it helped all the same, and even with their eyes on me, I wanted to dig into that space and release whatever coiled like a spring.

Adelais stopped talking about it, by some miracle, and I finished eating hurriedly, putting the plate in the sink – if we left it on the table, she went off like a firecracker – before shrugging on my travelling cloak and wrestling with my boots. I went outside, closing the door behind me, and winced at the brightness of the sun.

It blazed down and I shielded my eyes with my hand, walking only about twenty steps away from the lighthouse. I hadn’t heard from Murtagh for some time now. Was he coming back?

I knew he was busy in Esmer and my life ran along its narrow little path. As I stood there, I noticed rabbits in the distance, pale dun and eating flowers. Further ahead, white fluffy lumps of sheep, and smaller white lumps that were their lambs. They came up here rarely, apparently spooked by the cliff’s edge and staying in the distant meadow.

A few minutes later, the lighthouse door opened and Mildmay came out, walking over to me. He drew up alongside me.

‘She’s good,’ he said. ‘Food’s better than ever. You gonna make Murtagh take her away?’

‘I don’t think she’d go,’ I said pensively. ‘But you’re right, as far as housekeepers go, she may be a demonic nightmare, but life has gotten more comfortable for you and Walsh in particular, hasn’t it?’

Mildmay made a sound of agreement. They’d done most of the cooking, most of the housework, leaving me – the unlearned magician – to my own devices.

‘I don’t mean nothing by it,’ Mildmay said hesitantly, ‘Powers and blessed fucking saints I remember how I felt about it, but a cane could be good.’

‘I don’t need one,’ I said. ‘Besides, I rarely walk anywhere long enough to overstrain it. This isn’t the Mirador, darling.’

Mildmay tensed, but I had nothing else to say. It was a reminder to myself, more than anything, how I’d forced him to tax himself to agony every day. _Every day._ And he’d done so much more without a walking stick, without help, without anyone caring for him or making allowances for him, except Gideon.

‘You really didn’t know you couldn’t go down there,’ Mildmay said.

It ate at me, how much I couldn’t have this conversation with him. I hated that his voice was gentle now. I hated that his scathing judgement lay behind it, waiting for me to do something with thaumaturgy that he’d loathe. Though it likely wasn’t my magic he had such a problem with, but _me._ Oh, I didn’t doubt that he loved me, I knew he did, but perhaps he’d had some realisations over the past two years, and he felt more able to speak his mind now.

And he was right to, a lot of the time.

‘We ain’t never properly talked about it,’ Mildmay said, even more hesitantly than before.

Every sentence I could say to him, I dismissed immediately. I wanted to be cruel and unfair, but I recognised that as the reflex it was. It hurt just to stand next to him. He was brilliant, and he’d never known it for a single second until he came to Grimglass and they all saw him as a rogue-ish, charming, diamond-in-the-rough. Even then, he barely saw it, and needed so much of their love and admiration. He would never credit that he was the true celebrity in Grimglass of the two of us, but he was.

And it would never be enough to make up for everything that had been taken or forced or raped from him.

‘Felix? Ever notice you just don’t talk to me anymore?’

I missed it, I realised. His dialect. I missed the days when he would have said ‘no more’ instead of ‘anymore.’ While he still spoke with the voice of the Lower City, he enunciated so much more clearly now thanks to reading to Kay and talking to villagers. What I couldn’t manage with my nagging and harping on, Grimglass and his desire to be heard by others had miracled into existence. And now I missed it.

‘I talk to you,’ I said.

‘Not really. Come on, you know what I mean. The fuck are you pretending it’s not important?’

‘What do you want me to talk about?’ I said.

He shifted, and I knew this was my fault. I didn’t want to talk to him about anything. Not Murtagh, not being a martyr-shadow, not the injury, not the way he talked to me these days when he was angry. None of it.

‘Are you doing anything new in the village?’ I asked.

‘Felix…’ he said, and then rubbed at his face. ‘Yeah.’

He began talking about it and I listened, and he told me how he was working on getting plumbing to a street of people who couldn’t really afford the plumbing. I offered to use my magic to help matters along, and the entire time I could tell from the look on his face that he didn’t want to talk about this at all. But he embraced it eventually. He liked feeling competent, and I wanted him to feel that way.

‘I mean I didn’t know it was keeping you up,’ Mildmay said abruptly. ‘Back then. The mikkary or whatever in the labyrinth. Didn’t know it affected your sleep. You never said.’

‘It’s over,’ I said. ‘It’s over, and as you were so willing to point out, I’ll never go down there again.’

He shifted again, moving his cane to another section of ground.

‘You weren’t getting no sleep,’ he said. ‘Were you? I remember how you get.’

I smiled stiffly. ‘I think I’ve had too much sun. I’m going to head back inside.’

His hand shifted, I thought for one second that he’d been about to touch me on the arm to keep me back. But Mildmay didn’t do that, and I didn’t want him to do it. The only person I could handle touching me was Murtagh, who didn’t know that I hated to be touched in general, because none of my normal rules applied to him. It was infuriating.

‘How long’ve you not been talking to me?’ he said.

‘What is there to say?’ I said, swinging around to look at him. ‘I’m not going down there again, I _can’t._ The mikkary is gone. I’m doing fine.’

‘You ain’t,’ he said, and then his eyes widened. ‘You really ain’t, Felix.’

‘Nonsense. We have a new housekeeper. And didn’t you hear? We’re going to have casatiello on Domenica!’

He stared at me, and I wanted to do something to fix that expression in his eyes, the twist of his eyebrows. I hated it. I was ruining whatever he’d found here, and I didn’t want that at all.

‘It’s funny,’ he said, ‘how you spent all that time in Bernatha and Esmer telling me a whole bunch of shit, and it helped us, I mean, maybe, at least it helped _me._ And then I thought…’ His gaze bored a hole into me. ‘Hey, Felix, it don’t matter to me what you talk about, just wish you’d talk to me sometimes. You _can.’_

‘I’m having the most remarkable sense of déjà vu. Besides, I know how you feel about Murtagh, and I know how you feel about that labyrinth.’

His hand clenched on the cane. Desperation turned to grimness.

‘Kethe, okay, but I don’t know how _you_ feel about them things.’

‘I’m going to keep seeing Murtagh, if he’ll have me, and the labyrinth doesn’t matter, as it’s a non-issue. So now you know! If you need me, I’ll be working.’

I turned and walked back into the lighthouse, my hands shoved deep into my cloak pockets. When Adelais saw me, she wisely stayed silent after seeing the expression on my face.

I felt like a badger cornered in its den, Mildmay trying to dig me out. And I felt how close it was to the surface, how much I wanted to tell him how much I hated it here, how he’d hurt me, but I wasn’t a child and he wasn’t my tarquin or Keeper and had no right to know any of it. He couldn’t fix it. And it would only make him unhappy.

I sat down heavily in my chair at the table, then dug my fingers viciously into the muscles behind my knee, above the scar, curling into myself at the flash of heavy, twisting pain that followed.

It was convenient, wasn’t it? That something that helped me, hurt so much initially.

Mildmay didn’t need to know how incapable of happiness I was. It was a pathology he couldn’t fix, nor could anyone else. Something was broken, and I wasn’t going to let it stand in the way of him getting what he needed from Grimglass.

I shuddered as I worked my clumsy fingertips into knotted muscles and wished Murtagh was with me.

*

On Domenica, Adelais stayed home and made casatiello, which was yet another kind of stuffed bread, filled with cured meats and herbs and so more-ish I took several slices up to my room. She didn’t go with Mildmay and Walsh to Our Lady of the White Waters, instead choosing to sit by the open window and do needlework. I offered to bring her tea – which surprised me more than it did her – and then felt strangely like I’d done something very good when she smiled at me for bringing it over.

Then: ‘It’s under-brewed. Leaves can be left about a minute longer.’

I almost bristled for the correction, but then realised the critique came with a solution and nodded.

Upstairs I composed a letter to Corbie and another to Virtuer Ashmead, who had stepped up his correspondence lately for no apparent reason that I could tell. But I felt obligated to respond more frequently. I liked his letters well enough, he had a way of preserving his voice in writing that made it feel as though I was talking directly to him. I wrote to Virtuer Hutchence, and then wrote off several more generic requests for publisher’s catalogues, unsure how I was supposed to compose them and hoping they knew what I meant when I asked for them.

That night, for the first time in over a year, I sought the Khloidanikos. I’d avoided the oneiromantic construct, though I had no good reason as to why. I missed Thamuris, who still – despite being doomed from consumption many years ago – persisted in life, though he lived so much of his existence in the Khloidanikos’ Garden to escape the pain and sedation and fatigue of the every day.

Even in Grimglass, I still found Melusine in my dream construct, I still entered the Khloidanikos through the Horn Gate. And the Khloidanikos had recovered fully from my poisoning it when I’d stored Malkar’s rubies within it. As though I’d never harmed it at all, the peaceful stream was still there, the weeping willows. The stepping stones carved in the shapes of flowers. The reversed constellations in the sky overhead. The rose garden with its blossoms of red and orange and yellow.

I walked along glossy black slate past the water garden with its massive, fatly happy koi, and found my way to the Perseid tree. Once, this came into existence after I cast the obligation d’ame on Mildmay, and it had been a dead, lightning-struck thing, a symbol of what I had done to my brother. Over time, it began to heal, it dared buds, then leaves, and when last I saw it, it dared a single, beautiful flower.

Mildmay, healing.

Now, despite its blackened bark, the canopy was a profusion of leaves and buds and new growth, along with impossibly delicate, large flowers terminating, too many to count.

He _was_ healing. I pressed my hand to my chest, staring up at it. Eventually, I sat down on the bench beneath it, looking up in amazement. I didn’t think a tree had ever made me gladder, not since the first time I’d noticed a flower on it.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when I heard Thamuris’ footsteps. I looked up and he was the same as ever. The same smile, the same clothing, his loose hair falling in thick, burnished red waves down his back. He was vital in the Khloidanikos, so much brighter than the pallid young man I remembered, hair plaited to keep it out of the way, wasted and sweaty and dying.

But he was dying slower than ever, with the Khloidanikos to keep him alive. I didn’t know how it worked, only that his constant retreating here kept a spark alight in his bedridden body.

‘It’s been a long time,’ Thamuris said, sitting down beside me. ‘It’s very good to see you.’

‘Everything looks like it’s recovered,’ I said.

‘Diokletian has come around to the Khloidanikos, given how many years we’ve been coming here now. He tells me they discontinued oneiromancy in Troia over one hundred and forty years ago, but he’ll tell me while he stands here in the Khloidanikos, completely unaware that he’s an adept oneiromancer himself and nothing is discontinued while an acolyte of the Euryganeic Covenant stands next to me.’

‘That _does_ sound like him,’ I said, laughing.

‘It does, doesn’t it? I’ve grown fond of him. It is like considering a one hundred year old wise man and a fourteen year old at once. Though I daresay he thinks just as fondly and wrily of me. And you, Felix? Is something wrong?’

‘What? Why do you ask?’

‘Your aether is depressed, pushed down. Something…’ His eyes widened in horror. ‘Are you sick?’

‘No,’ I said. For a moment I thought maybe he could see some fundamental illness I couldn’t, the kernel of consumption or some other thing come to kill me. But then I realised that it was likely the same thing that Murtagh had picked up on, that I was not flourishing in Grimglass. Still, it made no sense to me, there had been plenty of other times I’d not been flourishing in life, and I’d been fine in the Khloidanikos. There were even times my life had been in danger, and Thamuris hadn’t noticed a thing. ‘Perhaps you’ve grown more sensitive.’

‘That’s true,’ Thamuris said. ‘Look over there. We added another constellation.’

I looked up to where he pointed, shocked to realise it was true. Four unique stars glittered, with another lying below it, large and lovely. That was a feat of thaumaturgical architecture that would have taken a monumental amount of effort, for the stars were set down by whoever created the Khloidanikos hundreds of years ago, and were the hardest feature to alter in the dreamscape.

‘Perhaps I spend too much time here,’ Thamuris continued. ‘But my life in the waking world is one of profound illness. Every year they tell me I won’t see out the year, and every year I do. But it is no life I want to live. Here… I learn such marvels here, Felix. But it is good to see you again. It’s always good to see a friend. Especially one as sharp as yourself. And where have your studies led you?’

We talked about Virtuer Grice’s notes and the lighthouse, and Thamuris shared some of his knowledge on Troian weather thaumaturgy, which I knew little about. I’d missed how easily he fell into the role of gentle, wise teacher, and now receptive he was to other viewpoints, even if they were heretical in nature. But then, Thamuris himself had been a heretic, there was a reason they sent him to the Gardens of Nephele in the first place.

Over the next couple of hours I found a side of myself I hadn’t fully engaged with since I’d been teaching at the Institution with the other Virtuers. And it wasn’t until we wound down – Thamuris seeming tired, even in the Khloidanikos – that I realised how intensely I’d missed it.

‘You should come here more often,’ Thamuris said. ‘Please, one day you will come here and I will no longer be here. Not as I am now. Though I’m certain the echo of me will remain. Isn’t that something? To be almost eternal here, something of me adding to the tapestry of this place. But I’ve missed our conversations. Diokletian has gotten better, but he still enjoys being right always, even when he’s not. He’s still obsessed with you.’

‘How tedious.’

‘Only sometimes. Perhaps I’m obsessed with you too, Felix, in my own way.’

I did not like to think of Thamuris dying, even though I’d been prepared for it for years. I wished I could have met him when he was healthy, thriving. I wondered if the Corambin healers could help him. Healing thaumaturgy was heretical in Melusine, though not in Troia, but I’d never seen any healing thaumaturgy as sophisticated as what the Corambins performed.

But it wouldn’t do to get his hopes up. He’d never survive a journey from Troia to Corambis.

‘It is like someone has bled the life out of you,’ Thamuris said. ‘Perhaps it’s not an illness, after all. Are you sure you’re not sick?’

‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘I don’t love the lighthouse, perhaps it’s that.’

‘The thing is, Felix, you can appear as vibrant as you wish to in the Khloidanikos. Even when things have been difficult for you, you were always…vibrant. As though alit from within, with passion and fervour. I think, if it’s not illness as you say…’

‘…Yes?’ I prompted.

Thamuris’ expression turned troubled. ‘No, it’s nothing. Perhaps it’s that I haven’t seen you for a time.’

I knew that wasn’t what he’d been about to say, but didn’t push for an answer. He was exhausted, even here, and I felt uncomfortable with the subject matter. It almost felt like he was about to ask me if I’d lost some of my passion for life, or fervour for learning or even myself, and I didn’t want to answer any of those questions.

‘The Perseid tree,’ Thamuris said, changing the subject. ‘Isn’t it a marvel?’

I looked at it and thought of Mildmay, and thought the tree showed that he truly was doing well in Grimglass, even when I worried for him.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s a marvel.’

*

Lunedy morning, and Adelais was bustling around the kitchen, cleaning up, humming a surprisingly melodic song to herself that reminded me of Bernathan tavern songs. As I stood to leave, taking my plate into the kitchen – she was retraining all of us, the harridan – she blocked my exit.

‘Am heading into the village to see Vanessa about procuring some supplies. Want to see Amice, too. You’re coming with me.’

‘I don’t believe I am.’

‘I’m not asking,’ she snapped.

I almost flinched backwards as she pushed past me, then watched as she headed down the corridor towards Walsh’s room. Well, her room now. There was some thought to making a small cottage beside the lighthouse for one of them. Adelais said if the cottage was poorly made, Walsh could sleep in it, and if it was well-made, she’d stay in it and get away from ‘the stench of you lot.’ Which was unkind, we had hot water plumbing and all bathed regularly.

She came back with a green leather bag embroidered with a spray of anemones, then placed that on the table and walked over to pull on her riding boots.

‘Can join me on Langonec,’ she said.

The idea of riding behind Adelais on her giant, bad-tempered horse into the village struck me dumb for a moment.

‘I’m not coming with you.’

‘Shut up! You are!’

‘Has anyone ever told you that you’re exceptionally rude?’

‘Yes,’ she said, like I was stupid for even saying it. ‘And eccentric, is a ‘kind’ way of saying _mad,_ if you ask me. Should just call me mad and be done with it.’

‘Does Amice even want you here?’

She flashed furious eyes up at me, but I couldn’t tell if she was more annoyed than usual. Adelais woke up on the wrong side of the bed most days of the week, and she may have been hard working and diligent, but she could shout up a storm if we took her for granted.

‘ _Yes,’_ she said. ‘Doesn’t matter, I want to be here. I like Grimglass. It’s wild and stormy.’

‘Like you,’ I said.

‘A little like me, yes,’ she said primly. ‘Now, put your boots on. Spend too much time in this lighthouse and it’s not good for you. At least if Vanessa gives you a hard time, we can gasbag about it on the way home, be good for you to bitch about something once in a while.’

I didn’t really want to go, but I didn’t want to go back up that elevator into my room, to work endlessly until I went to bed. The days oozed together in that room which wasn’t a cell, but felt like one all the same.

I put my boots on, my travelling cloak, and it wasn’t until we were out of the lighthouse and she was leading me to the stables that I realised I’d not checked my appearance. Self-consciously I touched my hair and thought of how much I’d stopped noticing things like that. It was easy to forget in Grimglass. My appearance didn’t matter to anyone except perhaps Murtagh. But when had it stopped mattering to me?

Langonec was a huge coldblood, he certainly hadn’t been bred in Bernatha, with its humid air and lack of need for coldbloods.

‘Where’s he from?’ I said, as she checked the girth and re-did it, Langonec turning his head and butting her repeatedly with his large, velvety nose.

‘A holy mountain,’ she said. ‘Went on a pilgrimage to get him about eight years ago now, and it was nearly the death of my mother that I went. She died soon after anyway, Lady rest her soul. Langonec’s from north of the Perblanches, where it’s snow and ice, and they make them like this. I read about them in a book, wanted to see if they were grand. Wanted a stallion, but could only afford a gelding.’

‘You read about them in a book,’ I said.

‘Children’s book.’ She rubbed Langonec’s nose and he pressed the flat of his head into her chest. I watched as she wrapped an easy arm around his head and held him in place, and for the first time since I’d met him, he seemed calm and at peace. He dwarfed her. She was tall by Corambin standards, but she was still shorter than Mildmay and I. Langonec dwarfed all of us.

‘You went to a holy mountain based on a _children’s story?’_

‘For someone who has had as many adventures as you have, you don’t seem an adventurous type, Felix,’ she said.

She’d stopped calling me ‘Virtuer Harrowgate’ on the first day. Though she always referred to the Duke of Murtagh as ‘His Grace,’ which likely had something to do with the generous pay she was receiving for being our housekeeper.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Adventure has a way of finding me.’

‘As you say. Come then, adventure has found you again.’

I learned a few things in short order. The first was that she didn’t ride side saddle, the first woman I’d met in the whole of Corambis not to do it, even though it made far more sense to sit fully astride. The second was that she expected me to sit behind her. The third was that Langonec could easily carry two people with no problem.

He swung his head back and gave me a dubious look, then stepped out neatly with a surprisingly smooth gait towards the town.

We cantered down the hill, and when we reached the road between the farmer’s fields, slowed to a walk. She pointed out different crofts and told me stories about who used to live there, commenting on the state of the fences – none of them in good enough repair by her standards – and the fatness of the sheep or the great shaggy cattle that made a milk creamy enough that even I noticed the difference.

I was surprised to realise I was enjoying myself. Adelais was a knowledgeable tour guide, though her stories were eclectic and tangential. And through her tales I learned that she’d been a sailor, and then the first gondolman to be a woman, and that she had a child and lost him swiftly to fever and loved him so fiercely she could never bring herself to have another. She told me easily that once she’d loved men and women, but that over time, she came to only want to be with women, for their love had a better taste.

I could feel myself flush down to my neck.

‘Isn’t that a sin?’ I said. ‘Loving them?’

‘Aye,’ she said, waving to some of the villagers in the town. I could see Kay’s manor now. It dominated the central street, the only other building of any note being the tavern and then the smaller but prettily made council-house. ‘But I’m godless, Felix. If the Lady exists, then I want to believe she loves and accepts me as I am, as she made me. If she doesn’t exist, then it never mattered. Was a problem when I was younger, but I don’t care at all now. Bigger things out there to get upset over. Don’t expect anyone else to think as I do, so how I feel doesn’t impact them and is none of their business anyway.’

We dismounted at the side of the manor, and the ostler came and took Langonec, marvelling over him with such awe that one would think the horse really was a prince. Langonec went with him willingly. The trick was apparently to treat him like royalty.

We were shown into Kay’s manor by Springett, Kay’s manservant, and even though Vanessa hadn’t been expecting us, she brightened to see Adelais. I watched, bewildered, as they embraced each other like sisters. Vanessa Pallister was a pragmatic soul in Grimglass, but everyone knew she just wanted to embrace the trends and fashions of Esmer, spending nearly half the year there. I would have assumed that Adelais was just too eccentric for her. Instead, they laughed over an inside joke I didn’t understand, and Kay stood nearby – silent and snub-nosed and grim-mouthed as always, and then his head swung in my direction.

‘Am going into the sun room,’ he said. ‘You can join me. Mildmay isn’t here?’

‘No, I’m afraid he’s not. I can make sure he comes next time, if that’s preferable?’

‘Is no matter,’ he said bluntly. ‘Mildmay comes every Domenica.’

I followed Kay into the sun room, which was down a long corridor away from the foyer. He didn’t use his stick, though he held it in one hand just in case. He knew this house well enough that he found his way to his chair and sat in it as easily as any sighted man would.

He leaned back and then turned his head towards the corridor, where more peals of laughter could be heard.

‘Is good for Vanessa to have Ms Rightwater here, but the house has been louder since.’

‘Ah, yes, Adelais is…’

‘She is,’ Kay said firmly, and then his lips twitched. ‘Richard will come home soon, summer holidays will return him to us.’

Vanessa’s son, Richard, had been sent to a boarding school in Esmer to get the best education. It occurred to me that he was one of the potential candidates to be the next Duke of Murtagh, especially now that Julian had rejected the Duchy outright. Kay had taken to the boy immediately and they had a close bond. It was hard for Kay to send Richard away, but Vanessa refused to have him tutored in Grimglass.

We talked about Richard and his grades and then the goings on in the village, and I listened as Kay spoke about his life and political dealings – for all that he openly loathed them, he was good at them – and I wondered if he told me all of it to be polite, if he’d already talked about this to Mildmay the day before.

‘His Grace has been staying in the lighthouse more often,’ Kay said, changing the subject. ‘Is unlike him.’

My lips pressed together. Kay and Vanessa weren’t fools, and Murtagh had a habit of riding to the village on Domenica after he’d spent the weekend with me. I knew Murtagh wanted to be discreet, but I wasn’t sure what that actually meant by his standards.

‘He used to spend time around the lighthouse as a child, I believe.’

‘He did say,’ Kay said, smiling a little. ‘Did not know his family had such a stake in Grimglass, until I came to live here.’

‘Speaking of, do you know anything about Murtagh’s brother, Clovis? Walsh mentioned something about him, but then wouldn’t say anything else.’

Kay’s face went expressionless, and I was so used to seeing that blankess from Mildmay I knew I’d stumbled onto something important.

‘Is tragic, what happened with Clovis,’ Kay said.

‘What happened?’

‘You’ll have to ask His Grace. When he next stays at the lighthouse.’ Kay paused and then said: ‘Which he is only staying at because he used to visit there as a child. Even though he has never stayed there before.’

‘Kay…’

‘Am no fool, Virtuer Harrowgate.’

‘We’re back to this again? Call me Felix, please. If we’re going to be hiding stories from each other, then surely you can understand why I’m not talking about this one.’

‘Am hiding nothing about Clovis,’ Kay said eventually. ‘Cry your mercy, but I have only pieces. Know it’s connected to Julian, and why he was sent here. His Grace is the only one with the full story.’

I grimaced, because that had the ring of truth to it. Connected to Julian and why he was sent to Grimglass? Was Clovis an aethereal? I frowned, turning it over in my head. Kay faced me expectantly, and I realised he wanted his own confirmation about Murtagh and I.

‘He wants it kept secret,’ I said.

‘He’s a fool, and always has been,’ Kay said. ‘But money and influence will keep people silent. Should be prepared for what will happen if people in Esmer find out. His Grace is able to weasel his way out of anything, but should prepare yourself just in case.’

‘It’s not serious, anyway,’ I said. ‘I imagine if it gets exposed, he’ll stop. I’m still exiled, it’s not like they can do _more_ to me. Isobel knows. She has her own man, you know.’

Kay grimaced. ‘Did not know. His Grace didn’t even tell me he planned on lecturing Julian until he did. That boy is too… His Grace is not a gentle man, and he does not see where gentleness is needed. Did not think I was a gentle man either, but even I can see what Julian does and does not need.’

‘Is he all right?’

‘No,’ Kay said, folding his hands in his lap. ‘No, he is not.’

‘Is it… Is it something I can help with?’

‘No, is not spirits, I think,’ Kay said. ‘Were he Caloxan… Lady of Dark Mercies, he would have pledged himself to some Prince as I did, and died for him as I wished to. I know not what his life is meant to look like, but cannot help but see the hypocrisy of His Grace lecturing Julian over his behaviour, given they are something of a kind when it comes to men. And Julian does not know, has not figured out his Uncle, and is lonely. Amice worries for him.’

‘It sounds like you all do.’

‘Listen to me,’ he said with some chagrin. ‘Did not used to be given over to petty gossips like these. I was a Margrave, once.’

‘I don’t think it’s petty to be worried for those around you, especially those under your custodianship. I just wish I knew the answer.’

Kay sighed. ‘If it were a war, I would know what to do. But there are no wars here, except those we fight with Darne’s men, and Julian’s battle is inside and he cannot be reached there. Know something about that too, but I don’t know the first thing about helping him with it.’

We lapsed into silence, and I listened to Amice, Adelais and Vanessa down the corridor, talking animatedly. Silences with Kay were comfortable, and I leaned back in my chair and wondered about Murtagh, and Julian, and the mysterious brother Clovis Carey, who everyone seemed to feel bad for, but no one seemed to know anything meaningful about.


	14. Unravel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, this chapter was a bit delayed because chronic illness stuff came and kicked me up and down the street. My favourite thing about Murtagh is how he becomes more of an ass, the closer he gets to emotional instability. *shakes him*
> 
> General tags: Light CBT, come facial, humiliation, you know, the fun stuff.
> 
> Murtagh is definitely in a mood to humiliate Felix. And Felix is definitely in a mood to point out that sometimes Murtagh is a sexist twat.

_Murtagh_

*

Vanessa Pallister – Lady of Grimglass – was not an attractive woman, and when I saw her in Esmer, I forgot how intelligent she was. She was easy enough to dismiss. But in Grimglass she was as much a ruler of her domain as I was of the Duchy. So I sought her out on the Savato morning that I arrived in order to primarily spend time with Felix. Vanessa’s long-time maid and confidante, Woodlock, served us tea and the kind of delicate biscuits that were only made in Esmer patisseries and had been shipped to Grimglass.

I imagined they’d nearly all broken and these were the last whole ones left.

‘Is this about your affair with Virtuer Harrowgate?’ Vanessa said, before I’d even progressed past small-talk to the real reason I was there.

‘Holy Lady, I hope you’re not talking like that to everyone.’

‘Of course not,’ Vanessa said, scathing. ‘I’m not an idiot, but nor shall I pretend to be ignorant around you. So, is it?’

‘Well, I suppose in a matter of speaking it is,’ I said, flustered. I mentally started counting who knew about the affair in my head: John Ashmead, Keane, Gisela, probably Cateline if Gisela knew, and then Mildmay and Walsh, if Vanessa knew I didn’t see how Kay couldn’t…

Oh dear.

‘Out with it, then,’ she said.

‘Listen, you still travel to Esmer on and off, for about half the year, yes? I wanted to ask if you’d ever consider taking Felix with you.’

She narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth like she wanted to disagree with me straight away, and then pushed back into her chair and reached for one of the biscuits, nibbling at it. After a while she tilted her head, and I knew she was truly thinking it over.

‘You think he misses Esmer?’ she said. ‘He’s a shut in here.’

‘I know.’

‘Adelais seems to be helping. Felix has been seen in the village a few times since, usually in her company. But he’s closed about his thoughts in general, I know nothing of what he thinks of being here, or how much he misses Esmer, except what I’ve gathered through observation.’

‘Ashmead’s interested in providing an opportunity for Felix to be able to teach at the Women’s College, perhaps a term at a time, travelling between Grimglass and Esmer as you do. I thought it might do well for him to have some company, or perhaps…more accurately, a reason to be made to leave Grimglass. If you’re there badgering him about it, I think he’d be more likely to go.’

‘I’m trying to think what that will do to my reputation in Esmer,’ Vanessa said, eyes bright. ‘The ladies are going to feel _quite_ scandalised, but there’s a chance it could do quite well for me.’

Vanessa Pallister had attended Miss Flowerdew’s finishing school, and she – like all the tittering upper echelon ladies of Esmer – could navigate the social structures of the city very well when she wanted to, something I’d forgotten until that moment. It was a sharp contrast to the bull-headed person she was in Grimglass, and spoke of a woman who deeply yearned for a different life. I couldn’t help but think Felix might find a common ground there and was surprised they’d never found it before.

But then I thought back to the few times I’d seen them all together, Kay and Mildmay and Felix and Vanessa, and Felix was often quiet or simply made the conversation go along easily. He wasn’t quiet or shy, he was simply never open about anything that mattered. He never once made it seem like he behaved that way out of discomfort, and anyone who didn’t know him well would think he had an easy disposition. Perhaps they’d assume that he liked Grimglass, and the chance to be away from those who had most actively persecuted him.

‘And you say he could teach at the Women’s College?’ She arched an eyebrow. ‘No doubt because the Institution doesn’t want him having congress with the boys, as though there’s any risk of that. There’s not, is there?’

‘None,’ I said.

‘I _could_ be persuaded to take Felix with me sometimes, _if_ you and Isobel host me and some of my friends in Esmer on occasion. It doesn’t need to be a lavish dinner, you understand, just something of normal quality for the Carey House.’

‘You were always subtle, Vanessa.’

‘You married me off to your brother-in-law out of a convenience to yourself, without consulting me on the matter, and it’s really only the Lady’s mercy that has made that pairing a successful one. Though you know as well as I do, it’s one of pure practicality, with Kay being bluet as he is. And now you want to pair me off with Corambis’ most eccentric bluet magician because it’s no doubt convenient to whatever you want again. You expect me to just sit idly by and not make the most of it? Please. Even Isobel’s taught me better than that.’

It wasn’t true that the Lady’s mercy made Vanessa and Kay a good match, I’d _known_ they would be, it was one of the reasons I’d paired them in the first place. But yes, it was certainly an arranged marriage that neither of them had a choice in. That was what I did, moved pieces and people around and made the Duchy and therefore Corambis a much stronger place. Still, it also meant I had no choice but to agree to Vanessa’s demands.

‘We’ll host you on occasion,’ I said. ‘Perhaps…twice per season, or even-’

‘ _Five times_ per season,’ she said.

‘Five? I don’t attend that many formal dinners at Carey House as it is. Do you know how busy I am? Three.’

Vanessa grimaced. ‘Fine. Three. But I’m to send a guestlist and Isobel is to arrange formal invitations sent out from Carey House. And I’d like the invitations to delicately remind them that none of it would be happening without my deep, abiding care for them.’

‘You are wicked.’

‘Your Grace, you act as though you’re the only one with any political nous in this country, but I assure you, you’re not.’

She smiled at me with the air of a cat that had finally gotten its bowl of cream. But all in all it had been a successful meeting, and as our conversation turned to how Richard was doing in boarding school, I thought that it would be very good to see Felix again. It had been far too long.

*

Adelais let me in. I’d only ever met her once, years ago and in passing. When Wyatt procured her as a housekeeper, I hadn’t met her again even then, I was only the person who signed her checks. But as was the norm, she recognised me, her face lighting up with something both fierce and pleased at once. I was too busy noticing the way the landing had already changed in the short time she’d been there. New rugs. The kitchen window was open and now had nicer, fresher curtains. The smell of baking permeated the house, and the aromatic scent of fresh herbs too.

There were even glass vases of wildflowers, one on the table, one on the kitchen counter by a giant slab of a cutting board, and a meat cleaver. I cast my gaze back to Adelais and saw the bloodstains on her apron.

‘Beef,’ she said, following my gaze. ‘Are you staying for dinner, Your Grace?’

I quietly added Adelais to the list of people who were inevitably going to know about me and Felix.

‘Yes, actually,’ I said. I closed the door behind me and she didn’t offer to take my travelling coat, but then realised it was for the best with her hands covered in blood. She walked back to the cutting board as I took my boots off. It was even warmer down here, I wasn’t sure how she’d managed that. Maybe she’d talked Mildmay into running hot water pipes somewhere I couldn’t see, the fireplace on its own wasn’t enough. Or perhaps it was that the oven was being used so much more often. ‘I’ll be staying in Felix’s room. I’d prefer no interruptions while I’m up there.’

She looked sidelong at me and grimaced, but I couldn’t tell if it was judgement or just a housekeeper’s acceptance.

‘Know suddenly why I’ve been hired,’ she said. ‘Hope you keep me on once you get bored of him.’

I stopped where I’d been lowering my pack to the table and turned to her. First, she’d dropped my formal address. But the attitude was half-rude and half-delightful. I reminded myself to treat Wyatt to something decent, because if she was happy to be like this with me, she was probably happy to be like this with the rest of them.

‘I forgot how blunt the Bernathans could be,’ I said, instead.

‘Now, now, can’t blame everything on Bernatha.’ She winked at me. ‘Though the Corambins do like to try. Still, they miss you down there. They get sad not seeing your pretty face in the newspaper.’

‘Hilarious,’ I said.

‘Pretty to _some.’_

‘No one in this house is ever going to call me ‘Your Grace’ except ironically, are they?’

‘And on payday,’ Adelais said with a firm nod.

I laughed in spite of myself. Then looked around the kitchen with its add-on lounge by the fireplace. It really did seem warmer, more inviting. I peered down the hallway but couldn’t see any sign of Walsh, Mildmay or Felix.

‘Walsh and Mildmay are off fetching berries for me,’ she said. ‘I’m making a pie for supper. Felix is up in his tower as always.’

‘Has he been eating better?’

‘He’s been eating,’ Adelais said after a pause, gazing at me with shrewd eyes. ‘Can tell he’s not used to it. Picks like a bird, doesn’t seem to notice half of what he puts in his mouth, can’t tell that he actually likes anything he eats, unless he takes some back up to his room. Usually Bernathan bread. Maybe you should have left him with us in the Holy Lady’s country.’

‘Maybe we should have,’ I said, looking up as though I could see him through the ceiling.

‘They’re all useless, I should add. Thought life might get interesting, living with two foreigners, but it turns out they’re the same messy lads you find from anywhere. Are no boys ever raised right?’

‘None of us, I’m afraid.’

‘Stop humouring me, will not get you nicer things in this house. They _all_ try.’

I grinned at her and she grinned back. Yes, I very much liked Adelais. I stretched until my back popped and walked closer to the kitchen counter, looking over all the changes, and then walked to the fireplace. There was more chopped wood than usual, and the fire was built a little higher, but that definitely wasn’t the cause of the increased warmth.

‘How has it been otherwise?’ I said. ‘With Felix. Vanessa said you’ve been bringing him to the village.’

I didn’t even bother pretending that I hadn’t hired her, in part, to give me information on the state of things. Anyone hired by the Duke of Murtagh in a servant role should probably expect it at some point, they all had their ears to the ground in a way no one else did.

‘Is a little bit like living with a wet cat that’s only ever half-dry,’ she said. ‘An’ suggesting new things to him is a little bit like dumping a bucket of water all over him again. But it’s been fine, Your Grace. He makes me tea, sometimes. Getting quite good at it now.’

She raised the meat cleaver and chopped out hunks of meat, rolling each one in a thin layer of flour and then piling them onto a plate. There was also a plate of pure fat, likely there to be rendered down and used for something else. It reminded me of a childhood where I spent far too much time in the Carey House kitchens, bothering all of the help, thieving whatever I could.

‘If I’m being honest,’ she said, ‘I like him, but you can tell he’s closed up like a shop during the Trinity Days. Doesn’t use magic unless I make him. Doesn’t talk about a thing unless I make him and then he hisses about it. Doesn’t come down for food unless I remind him to eat. Hisses about that too. Didn’t realise Corambis left such a poor impression on him. Mildmay is a dream. Even helps around the kitchen, though he shouldn’t with that leg.’

‘You really think Corambis left a poor impression on him?’

‘I think he’s _tired,’_ she said, staring at me like I was an idiot for not knowing that myself. ‘Think he’ll be even wearier when you get bored of the novelty and find someone else.’

I stared at her levelly and she had the good grace to at least duck her head and look away. She apologised stiffly and I grunted an acknowledgement, but I was still angry. There was a difference between speaking with candour, and challenging my moral fibre and implying that I was going to hurt Felix because of it.

Even if it was true, it wasn’t a servant’s place to tell me so. It reminded me far too much of sitting over Felix’s file, knowing that John Ashmead was right in trying to prevent me from reading it. But I knew what I knew now, and I’d realised as I’d gone back to Carey House, there was plenty I still didn’t know. There were holes and gaps, stories I’d never hear of. It shocked me how much I wanted to know it all, how much I cared. Even with Cateline, I’d never needed to dig into her in quite the same way.

In the end, Adelais sent me up with a thermos of hot chocolate for Felix, along with several sweet cinnamon and nutmeg rolls she’d made the day before. I had my pack slung over my shoulder and the pulley elevator took me up, and I thought it was telling that Mildmay wasn’t here. He would have known I was coming, surely.

I was no closer to him liking me, certainly not after last time.

It was all too easy to remember the way Felix had fled the corridor and left us both standing there, Mildmay looking shocked, and me with my dismay that all the work and progress I’d made with Felix would be undone.

‘Do you always talk to him like that?’ I’d said, staring at Mildmay.

He glared at me, but then he’d looked back to the elevator and worry crossed his features. The scar that twisted across his face was brutal, but he was expressive enough, and he wasn’t the first man I’d met whose face had been mauled by conflict. He _was_ the first who hadn’t simply gone to see a physician-practicioner about it to get it repaired so that the scar wasn’t split across his lip so savagely.

‘He didn’t do this to annoy you,’ I said. Mildmay looked back to me so quickly that I saw a hint of the fast reflexes and instincts that Felix had told me Mildmay had back in the Lower City in Melusine. ‘I don’t know what’s going on between you both, but he cares very much about your opinion of him, and there are certainly better ways to make your point.’

‘Ain’t needing a lecture about it,’ Mildmay said finally, speaking more precisely than usual. ‘You don’t know us.’

‘That, I contend, is true,’ I said. ‘I had no idea you could both turn into thirteen year olds at the drop of a hat. Now, I’m going to go check on him, because we were having a rather _fine_ morning.’

It was pointed and rude, but I was angry at him. How did he not see how defensive Felix was around him? How dependent Felix was on his good favour? And if Felix was so dependent on his praise, maybe it was because he got so little of it in the first place. Watching Mildmay mock Felix’s injury – which I had felt and touched for myself, and knew the horror of – had insulted something in me I couldn’t name. I couldn’t imagine what I would have done if a family member had mocked my arm or my limited ability with it after the battle for Desperen.

‘Excuse me,’ I said to Mildmay, walking past him.

That had been the end of it, but perhaps Mildmay hadn’t wanted anything to do with me since, because he vanished after that argument and he wasn’t here today. That had the potential to get very uncomfortable. But I also hadn’t considered I was overly being harsh with them. They weren’t children, they were adults, and I wasn’t going to pretend I was fine with witnessing that kind of immaturity.

As the elevator pulled to a halt, I entered Felix’s room and closed the door behind me. I saw him at his desk tucked into a corner created by an added wall in the circular room. He turned and looked at me and raised his hand in greeting, but didn’t get up, wasn’t waiting nervously for me. It was no formal greeting at all. I squinted at him.

I lowered my pack, the thermos, the bread rolls Adelais had given me and tilted my head at him. To my surprise, he spoke first.

‘You were never planning on telling me about Adelais, were you? That was the point. Because you knew we’d say no.’

‘That was the point,’ I said. ‘Hello, Felix.’

‘I’d just like to say that in the future-’

‘I seem to have you at a bit of a disadvantage, so let me interrupt you now. If you don’t call me Sir in this bedroom or make even a cursory attempt at remembering the rules I gave you last time, there _will_ be consequences.’

Felix tensed, his fingers tightening on the quill he’d been writing with. He didn’t bother looking at me and I could feel the rebellion there, poised and ready to attack. After Vanessa’s ham-handed blackmail, Adelais’ belief that I was definitely going to hurt Felix at some point and that he couldn’t – apparently – handle what most humans went through in their lifetime, and now Felix’s catty anger, I paid close attention to my irritation.

‘ _Sir,’_ Felix drawled, as though well aware that I’d never asked him to use the term with respect as part of the rule, ‘any other surprises you plan on springing on me?’

‘Plenty,’ I said, walking over to him. He didn’t turn to look at me, not until I was standing directly at his back. I placed hands on his face and shoulder and kept him facing forwards when he tried to look over his shoulder at me. ‘Stay there, since you’re so eager not to greet me. Has she truly been such a burden?’

‘I quite find it’s the principle of the thing, Sir,’ Felix said.

‘Then let me explain it to you from my perspective,’ I said, my fingers tightening on his shoulder. With my other hand, I began to gently undo the bright red ribbon holding his hair behind his back, and he shivered as I carefully pulled it free. ‘You, Walsh and Mildmay are under my purview. You were exiled in my Duchy, and as long as you remain in Grimglass, I’m responsible for you, also Kay and Vanessa, also all of Grimglass when we come down to it. Does that make me paternalistic at times? Of course it does. Especially when I see two fellows with long-term injuries and no idea how to begin to hire a local housekeeper, and an elderly man accustomed to doing without and suffering for it. They’d all have far too much pride to tell me they’d benefit from staff in the house, and yet, it would be irresponsible of me to cave to that pride.’

‘Is that how you justify all your roughshod sprints through people’s lives, Sir?’

‘It rather is, yes,’ I said, massaging my fingers into Felix’s scalp.

The quill fell out of his fingers and he reached for it clumsily, plunking it into a glass of water.

‘She seems to be a good baker,’ I said softly. My irritation was evaporating away, Felix’s hair soft through my fingers, and I could feel the way his head moved back into the touch. I slid the hand at his shoulder to his neck and stroked his throat with two fingers. In response, he bared more of himself to me and I fit my hand around his neck, starkly remembering his flashback when I’d bathed him.

But this was nothing like that.

‘I hate that I like her,’ Felix said. ‘I was ready to tell you that you had no idea what we needed, and instead you solved problems we didn’t know we had. But even if you don’t plan on listening to a word I say in the future, Sir, I’d appreciate you telling me how you plan on upending my life.’

‘Do you?’ I said. I lowered my mouth to his ear. ‘Would it help if I told you I’d very much like to leave you aching and bruised for me by the end of this weekend?’

A caught, low sound in his throat that I wouldn’t have known about, but for the fact that my hand was on his throat.

‘What are you working on?’ I said.

‘What? Oh. Ah, Grice’s… The usual, Sir,’ Felix breathed.

‘And what’s the usual?’

‘You can’t _surely_ mean to-’

My hand tightened on his neck, and his hands rose off the desk automatically, fingers splaying like he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with them.

‘Put your hands down, Felix.’

He put his hands down again, and I took an inordinate amount of delight in having control over these gestures of his. I wasn’t squeezing hard enough to cut off air or blood, just enough that he felt the threat of it. I wasn’t remotely irritated anymore, one hand at his throat, and the other now sliding down into his shirt, over his bare chest. His breathing was shallow, his back pressed harder into the chair. I had the pleasure of watching one of his legs stretch out, then pull back in, like he already couldn’t bear it. His responsiveness spoiled me.

‘What’s the usual?’ I repeated.

‘Today I’m deciphering part of a long treatise into how the haar acts as a liminal space,’ he said, his words rushed as my fingers trailed down to his nipple and began stroking over it. Truthfully, I’d planned no formal play with him this time, I didn’t want anything as controlled and brutal as last time. I wanted to remind him that not every encounter with me had to drive him to terror.

Well, not terror like that, anyway.

‘And how does the haar act as a liminal space?’

I walked around the chair until I had better access to the rest of him, keeping one hand on his neck, sliding my other hand out of his shirt and trailing it down his body instead. I could feel his eyes on me, but I watched my fingers smoothing over his flank, the top of his thigh, my thumb curving inwards towards his groin.

‘I asked you a question, little rabbit,’ I said.

He opened his mouth, I pressed my hand between his legs and looked at him, watched the way his mouth slackened. He pressed his lips together and narrowed his eyes at me, I smirked at him.

‘I have a bed, Sir,’ he said.

Perhaps he wanted someone to push him today, because this was very rebellious for Felix. I pressed my hand harder between his legs, twisting my hand into a loose fist until I could angle my knuckles forward instead of my palm, and slowly pushed until his hips jumped backwards and he had nowhere to go. I kept up the pressure.

‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Answering me is entirely up to you, of course.’

I pressed harder, his feet scrambled across the ground and his face twisted up, turned away, hiding his pain from me. I squeezed his throat harder and kept him pinned back to the chair.

‘I have all day,’ I said lightly.

His breathing burst out of his lungs, followed by a run of shallow breaths. Well, I wasn’t hurting him _that_ badly, but there’d also been hardly any lead-up to it, and he wasn’t fully erect, didn’t have arousal to brace him through the pain. He’d told me himself that pain alone wasn’t enough to turn him on. I was surprised that he hadn’t attempted to answer my question yet.

Something about working alone up here shoved him so far into the cage of his mind, that yielding threatened him somehow. It was as though he’d locked his shadow self away.

‘He…’ Felix’s voice deliciously strained. ‘Grice believed if one could- If one could draw the haar to the land, they could summon spirits and the remnants of the dead. He tried it multiple times but it seems, ah, _ah,_ Sir, please.’

‘No, go on, I’m listening. It’s interesting.’

A heavy, despairing exhale and he looked back at me then, those mismatched eyes begging with me. In response, I twisted one of my knuckles against the fabric of his trousers, the cock beneath, and he pressed his lips together and his eyes screwed shut.

‘Don’t preoccupy yourself with how you’re disappointing me,’ I said easily. ‘You’re still _lovely_ like this.’

One of his hands slid off the table and dropped limply to his side.

‘He tried it multiple times, Sir,’ Felix continued, ‘but only seemed to summon storms, and – at times – memories. I think there’s good reason to explore the, ah, _fuck.’_ A pause where Felix just panted, the hand that had dropped curling into a loose fist, before going lax once more. ‘To explore the haar as a vehicle to trace lost memories. That’s it. That’s the core of it.’

‘ _Good_ boy,’ I said firmly, drawing my hand away from where I’d been hurting him, and then grabbing a handful of his hair and pulling his mouth up to mine. I kissed him fiercely, and it was as though I’d unlocked whatever door he’d been hiding himself behind. He made weak, caught sounds into my mouth and then pushed hard into my lips, opening his mouth for my tongue, groaning when I gave it to him.

I don’t think he expected me to move my hand from his hair back to his trousers, hurriedly undoing the fastenings and curling my fingers around his cock, jacking it to full hardness. Maybe where he came from, tarquins didn’t give their martyrs handjobs while they sat at their desks, but everything I’d learned about tarquins and martyrs made me wish I could shake Marathat until all the idiocy fell out.

Raw pain might not bring him to orgasm on his own, but it had definitely primed his arousal. He was shockingly receptive to the pleasure I offered now, writhing on the chair, grabbing at my shirt with one of his hands and pushing his neck into my hand so that I’d tighten my grip. He came in minutes, my hand catching most of his spill. I continued to move my palm and fingers on him until he cried out from raw overstimulation, and I watched hungrily as I took him from pleasure back to pain, and then let go all at once and smeared the come on my hand across his face.

His mouth opened in shock, and I pushed my fingers in. ‘Suck,’ I ordered.

Clumsy at first, clearly still wrapped up in the intensity and frenetic speed of his own release. But his tongue and mouth quickly turned elegant. And so I dragged him off the chair onto his knees, bending over him briefly to check that he wasn’t kneeling as strictly as he could make himself. I undid the fastening of my own trousers, taking my cock in hand and pushing it quickly over his tongue to the back of his throat.

I took his mouth swiftly, with little thought to his welfare, he’d been trained to handle it after all. This was something he knew how to do perfectly, and he made eager, hungry sounds against me, his throat working, only occasionally lapsing into unbidden gags when the timing of his swallowing and my thrusts jarred. One of his hands gripped my hip hard, the other my thigh, and I suspected he needed it to feel grounded.

I had his hair up in my sticky, come-covered fingers, making a mess of him, possessive and overcome by the urge to remind him that he belonged to me.

I pulled out just before coming, and he cried out in loss as I finished myself off with my own hand, a brief burst of quick strokes and then I came onto his face. I had the satisfaction of watching him open his mouth for whatever dripped from his cheek and lip onto his tongue.

And then I pushed him back and stepped away from him, leaving him there, and gazed smugly and hungrily at the mess I’d made of him. Felix looked spectacular brought low.

His panting tapered off. He was still fully clothed, but for his undone trousers. He raised trembling fingers to his face and wiped come off his closed eyes and then stuck his fingertips into his mouth and sucked them clean at the orders of no one. I made a sound of appreciation just to see it.

Eventually, his eyes opened and he stared up at me, his gaze almost calm.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Good afternoon, Sir.’

I couldn’t help myself. I laughed in delight.

*

We showered together. I was determined to try the bath again one day, but not at the beginning of a weekend. I washed his face carefully and didn’t let him help. I washed his hair. I took control of these small things and offered comfort, but also the reminder that I was his flame and he was to be a shadow around me. I watched him slowly spiral down and inwards until he was near pliant in my arms. His normally breathless voice had turned softer, deeper, steadier, and when I pulled him into me, he only briefly resisted before leaning against me, his forehead heavy on my shoulder.

‘My darling Felix, I have missed you,’ I said.

‘Have you, Sir?’ he said.

He’d been about to say something else, but he caught the words and covered them with that instead. I wondered what was so vulnerable that he needed to hide it under another kind of vulnerability.

‘Of course. Given the choice between the hyenas at my heels in Esmer, and you, it’s easy to make the choice.’

I paused after speaking, forehead furrowing. That sounded…more than just my usual praise, and incredibly sentimental. Sentiment was dangerous, when it came to fucking men. As I stood there, uncomfortable with my own realisation, I closed my hands around his arms and rubbed at them. I still wasn’t certain what I wanted to do with him this weekend, but we were off to a swimming start.

‘How do you feel about spanking?’ I said.

His surprised breath of laughter was muffled by the falling water, he pushed back and stared at me.

‘Sir,’ he said. ‘How do I _feel_ about it?’

‘That’s exactly what I said.’

He looked faintly incredulous. ‘Well, there are things that hurt more.’

‘Which is an observation, not a feeling.’

After a moment, his cheeks flushed redder than the hot water had made them, and he came forward to press his head against my shoulder again. He was hiding, and I thought, wickedly, that perhaps he felt rather humiliated over the idea of being spanked.

‘ _Have_ you been spanked before?’ I said.

It was a cruel kind of teasing, I knew that he had.

‘Of course, Sir,’ he said.

‘So?’ I said. ‘How do you feel about it? Do you want to avoid my questions again? You won’t enjoy it, darling. But I will.’

‘It seems somewhat childish, Sir,’ he said.

‘Were you spanked as a child? Or were you whipped?’ I placed a hand boldly on the scars on his back and he made a sharp, uncomfortable sound. A moment later I felt a scrape of teeth over my shoulder. Oh, he was feeling bold enough to show me that he didn’t like this line of questioning. It just made me want to get my hands on the curves of his ass even more.

‘ _Scourged,’_ he said venomously. ‘And sometimes hit, but not spanked. Sir, isn’t spanking for good little children, in the good little families?’

‘Is it?’ I said. ‘Maybe you’ll find out tonight.’

He shuddered, and I grasped his wet hair up in my palm and pulled his head up so that I could speak directly into his ear.

‘Tell me you find the thought of it humiliating, Felix.’

‘Very humiliating, Sir.’

‘Do you think I’m the kind of man to avoid something just because you find the idea of it _very_ humiliating?’

‘I know you’re not, Sir,’ Felix said ruefully.

I grinned and let go of his hair, and he looked at me and then rolled his eyes and shook his head and didn’t bother protesting any further. All of it was a win. He’d told me a little bit about his past when I’d prompted him. He’d actually told me how he felt about something I wanted to do to him, even if he was reluctant and I had to ask some leading questions. And he was still here in my arms, warm and tall and malleable just for me.

I couldn’t help myself, I needed to assert myself into the corners of him, into the shadows of his mind. It was what a flame did. I couldn’t ever whip his back, not just for the sake of his mind, but his body couldn’t handle it. But I could tan his ass red and see if he’d cry over something he felt was childish and only for the good little children. That sounded complicated enough to be potentially delicious.

For now, I folded him into my arms and braced my weight and encouraged him to lean into me. Softness for now, because this also soothed something hungry and feral in my chest, to have him tamed and mine, the only leash I needed in the moment being my voice and my body and the skin to skin contact that I also craved.

*

We sat naked on his bed and he sipped at hot chocolate from the thermos, and then tore pieces of the cinnamon and nutmeg roll apart in his hands until he could winkle his fingers into the softest parts. He ate those first and seemed bemused at the way I ate mine like a normal person. His good spirits now appeared to be real, genuine, as his hair dried into curls that were oiled and brushed in such a way that they wouldn’t be as wild and untamed as I’d seen them in the past.

A terrible shame, but I supposed if we were to go down to dinner in a few hours, it wouldn’t do for him to look well-tumbled from the outset.

‘Kay told me that you lectured Julian, Sir,’ Felix said archly. ‘In fact, he told me that you did a rather terrible job of it.’

I thought it was somewhat daring of him to bring the subject up, given I’d promised him a spanking later. Instead I sighed. ‘I have no idea what to do with him to bring him into line.’

‘Of course, Sir, it’s not like you have any common ground with him. You, of course, have no idea what it’s like to go about fucking random men,’ Felix said drily.

‘He doesn’t _know_ I do, and I’m discreet.’

‘Oh,’ Felix said, laughing. ‘Is that what they’re calling it now? Sir, you were discreet when Wyatt hired me through what he thought was my pimp – all right, yes, Corbie was my pimp for a time – and I turned up in the Althammara and he and Corbie were the only souls alive who knew what I was there for and what you were using me for. But now? Do you honestly think you’re being discreet now?’

And Felix didn’t know about John Ashmead, and he didn’t know about Vanessa, or perhaps he did. I winced and lay back against his headboard, shoving the pillow into shape beneath me until it became a better backrest.

‘Still, the fact remains that he’s spoiling the Carey name. And his attitude. I was never so… He’s unpredictable and fickle, it’s almost womanly!’

Felix stilled where he’d been about to put another piece of the outer layer of bread and cinnamon roll into his mouth. ‘Really? You as well? I shouldn’t be surprised.’

‘It’s what the aethereals are like,’ I muttered. ‘All of them. Even women aren’t so bad.’

‘I wonder what Isobel would say if she heard you, Sir.’

‘She’s used to me,’ I said, turning to my side and staring at him. ‘Don’t tell me you’re one of those men who believe that we’re all created equal? Even the gentler sex? There’s a reason it’s women and children first, and then the men, you know.’

‘Oh, yes, of course, Sir, you would have been _fun_ at the Mirador,’ Felix said almost dreamily, his gaze going distant. ‘One of those gentler, softer women would have turned your testicles inside out before you could blink.’

I stared at him, unable to hide my sudden cringe, and he smiled at me, amused.

‘There’s no difference in the quality of their magic. There’s no difference in the quality of their minds. And there’s no physical job they cannot do, unless they haven’t been allowed to develop the muscle for it, and the same can be said of anyone, even me. I know what you think of me, the backwards Marathine, from the monstrous Mirador where we burn our heretics alive to make a point. But not every country gets everything right, and _Sir,_ I think you should consider that this is Corambis’ greatest failing. Why, I’ve never seen anything so stupid as a woman being forced to ride side saddle in my life.

‘Besides,’ he continued. ‘What has any of that to do with Julian? He’s an aethereal, the emotional instability comes with the territory, judging by what’s been explained to me, but I can’t say I blame him. Or any of them, really. In the brief time I had no access to my magic but could still sense noirance, could still hear spirits screaming and screaming for a relief that would never come to them, I felt not all that stable myself. You ripped him from everything he’d ever known, he carries a heavily stigmatised burden, and now you’re shocked he’s rebelling? He’s _eighteen.’_

‘And you’d know much about rebellious eighteen year olds, would you?’ I said, to cover my discomfort at his words.

‘I was one,’ Felix said shortly, and then his gaze turned briefly troubled, and I thought of Malkar and I thought of that file I’d read and I suspected the punishment’s for Felix’s teenage rebellions were nothing like what Julian could imagine. ‘But more to the point, he’s in Grimglass, he has a bright mind and he has nothing to do. You can point out that he attends Kay, but that’s not enough for him. He was a scholar. Now he’s little more than an exiled servant who carries the privilege of a name, and nothing else.’

‘Sir,’ I added, staring at him levelly.

He stared back at me and I saw the muscle jump in his jaw. I thought he’d really challenge me then, and in a month, perhaps two, I’d allow it. But we weren’t out in the woods, we weren’t downstairs, we were in this room and I was going to remind him of his place when I was here whether he liked it or not. After another few seconds, he bit out the word like it was an insult.

‘You’re so angry with me? All I did was talk to the lad,’ I said.

‘Kay’s worried about him,’ Felix said. ‘Kay worries about everyone in his own way, but I think he’s genuinely worried for Julian and what he might do to himself. As someone… Sir, as someone familiar with the impulses that Julian might be experiencing, there is nothing you can say to him that is not worse than what he’s saying to himself, so perhaps you might wish to consider a different approach. I’m sure you’ve chanced upon someone else using tact once or twice in your life, perhaps you might learn what it means.’

I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling. ‘I didn’t come here to be lectured.’

‘I know very well how I seem sometimes, like I’m not capable of caring about the people around me, but I worry for him too, Sir. And you seem to be the one with the greatest ability to help him or hurt him at this point in time.’

I pressed the heels of my palms to my forehead, and then winced as my sore arm twinged. Well, that’s what I’d get for using my arm so much around Felix.

And then Felix was there, easing my palms down and pressing his fingers carefully into my forehead, frowning down at me. He’d never been so at ease touching me before, and I couldn’t help but feel like everything today was new ground. Something had changed between us last time, and it was still changing. He massaged my forehead with his clever, badly-healed fingers that carried signs of their breaks to anyone who was looking for them, and he knew what he was doing. Some of the tension I was carrying melted away.

‘Don’t stop,’ I murmured.

‘I didn’t realise it vexed you to this degree, Sir,’ he said. ‘Is it that I spoke out of turn? Or everything else?’

‘Felix, the day we spend an entire weekend together and you don’t speak out of turn, I will be sure you’ve gone mad. No, I’m as aware as anyone that I cocked it up with Julian.’

He didn’t respond, and eventually moved his fingers to my temples, and then further down, behind my ears. I groaned then, because there were tight, sore points that I’d never even noticed. But he didn’t stop, and then I was groaning because it felt incredible.

It occurred to me that I was stressed over far more than Julian. Adelais wasn’t the first to bring up Felix’s welfare, Kay had done so as well, Ashmead too. They were all certain I was on a path to destroy him, even if they wouldn’t say it outright. I was trying to understand my own needs, my own sentiment in the matter, for I wouldn’t normally be driven to send a housekeeper to a lighthouse on behalf of a lover, and I couldn’t recall ever having talked to the Dean of the Institution about finding a teaching position for someone before, just because I liked them. Those actions, bold and confident, made it seem like I knew what I was doing.

But it felt like it was unravelling around me and I couldn’t put my finger on why. It made no sense. My life was about dealing with the hundreds of matters – large and small, those that would impact an entire population, and those that would simply please Isobel – and doing it with incisive aplomb, years of experience and military might behind me.

‘I think I’m getting old,’ I said.

Felix laughed, the sound surprisingly light. ‘We all do that, Sir.’

‘Even you?’ I said, opening my eyes and looking up at him. He was stretched over me, so his other hand could properly reach the other side of my face, and his eyes were close. One blue, one yellow.

‘Even me, Sir.’ he said on a half-smile.

‘You still hate calling me Sir at moments like this, don’t you?’

‘I wouldn’t say that I hate it, Sir,’ he said, and then moved his fingers down to my jaw, massaging at the hinges where the muscles were so tight I grunted. ‘No one’s required it to this degree. To me, being a martyr was all about, well, fucking and pain. But you’re not hurting me, and you’re not fucking me, so I don’t know why we still do this. Except…’

‘Except?’

‘Except it never lets me forget what you are,’ Felix said, his gaze so intent on me it could have been intimidating, except that I didn’t find him frightening like some of the others did. ‘And you’ve told me yourself that’s the intent of it. It never lets me forget what I am, either.’

‘And what are you?’ I said, reaching up and grasping his wrists, holding him still, watching the colour rise to his cheeks.

‘A shadow, Sir,’ he said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not quite a martyr either. Be clear, little rabbit, if I am the one making you call me Sir, then what are you?’

Felix watched me, his eyes darting between mine, and then he swallowed.

‘Your shadow, Sir,’ he said, his voice rougher than before. My hands tightened on his wrists automatically, and I thought I might like to bind them together before the night was over.

‘Yes,’ I said. _‘Mine._ And you call me Sir in this room, because I don’t want you to ever forget it.’

He seemed stunned into silence, and my hands tightened on his wrists until he winced, and he still said nothing. The feral thing within me roared to life once more and I grabbed him by the shoulder, yanking his mouth down to mine. I bit at his bottom lip roughly enough that he gasped, but he still yielded, and as he melted into me I turned my focus solely to him, as much to comfort myself as to declare my ownership.


	15. Good Little Boy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s note:** There is a strong thread of Daddy Dominant/little boy psychology in this scene, even though Felix never once says (or thinks) ‘Daddy.’ But I know that can be squicky for people, so a heads up nonetheless. As always, if you're on the fence, I cautiously suggest giving it a try? New tags are: Spanking, Humiliation and Shame (how did I not have Humiliation in there already? Whoops).

_Felix_

*

I had a dismal habit of not guarding my tongue enough around Murtagh. But the words ‘good little boy’ kept echoing around my head even at the table while we all ate dinner together in one of the most mismatched families I’d ever seen; Mildmay, Adelais, Walsh, Murtagh and myself. Adelais didn’t believe in servants eating at different times to those they served, ‘Not so long as we all live in a bloody lighthouse and there’s no servant’s quarters.’

I swore I could still taste Murtagh in my mouth. The heavy girth of his cock rubbing the corners of my lips raw, and his come, creamy on my fingers as I pushed them onto my tongue, cheated of him coming down my throat.

And Murtagh made conversation, talking easily with Adelais and Walsh, and sometimes he’d look at me and his gaze burned. It was like I could feel his cock in me already, everywhere. His hands all over me, touching and grasping and pulling and bruising and claiming. It should have been horror. Instead it was a thrill of delight and terror both, like the first time I’d dived deep into my own magic and realised it could consume me and burn me out if I didn’t pay attention.

So I paid attention.

‘And you, Mildmay?’ Murtagh said, like he was completely unaware that he was prodding a beehive. ‘How do your engineering exploits fare? I’ve been informed that the lighthouse is set to run for another good few decades now you and Felix have both looked over it. That’s quite something.’

Mildmay stared at him, and I mentally willed him to just try. But I felt the open space of the corridor behind me like a vacuum, remembered all the things Mildmay had said, and felt like someone had set steel wool to the inside of my ribs.

I was about to bend my head to focus solely on eating, rather than whatever catty thing Mildmay was about to say – for all he told me that was my domain, he could manage it just as well when he had a mind to – and he caught my gaze as I raised the fork to my mouth. Whatever he saw seemed to create the smallest softening in his expression, and that made my cheeks burn, and I stared at my meal and ate it like I could taste it.

‘S’going fine,’ Mildmay said. ‘Getting plumbing down Seth-smith Way ain’t easy, but septad and six things are harder than plumbing.’

‘Like cardsharping?’ Adelais said.

I blinked at the carrot on my fork. Had Mildmay _told_ her?

‘Wouldn’t know,’ Mildmay said, a sly little smile in his voice even though I knew I wouldn’t see one on his face. He was talking to her about the past? He was telling her about the things he’d done? For some reason the thought of it was a bruise in my chest. I thought I was the person he talked to about those things. And then… And then I assumed he’d no longer need to talk about those things.

‘I made an attempt at cardsharping once,’ Murtagh said blithely, ‘but realised it required just as much strategy as the war table, and wouldn’t make a good hobby at all.’

I bitterly thought that it wasn’t something some people had the luxury to turn to for a hobby. Mildmay had done it to make money to survive, to make a profit for his Keeper, but I also knew he did it for himself with his solitary games, that he still craved the cleverness of it. Perhaps it was one of the only ways he could show his cleverness in those early days, when his Keeper no longer found him useful, once his face had been disfigured with a blade.

‘Still, can imagine it,’ Adelais said to Murtagh. ‘Seems right up your alley.’

‘Well, now you’re just casting shade on my personality, Adelais. Are you trying to say that I’m by nature a scoundrel?’

‘Would never,’ Adelais said. ‘But if you read into it that way, I can’t stop you.’

Murtagh laughed in a way that still surprised me. Like it was fine for people of significantly lower station to talk back to him like that. In some ways, it made it clearer that when he reprimanded me and how I talked back to him, he did it as a flame talking to his shadow, and not a Duke talking to a subject. It baffled me. I had no idea how he’d earned so much respect throughout Corambis, but suspected it had something to do with moments like these.

Malkar would have flayed Adelais alive for talking so freely. He’d tried to do nearly the same to me once for daring to talk back to him.

‘I’m not clever enough for it,’ Murtagh said finally, helping himself to seconds, scooping fat, generously sized dumplings into his bowl and leaving enough for everyone else as though that was something he had to do. ‘I like to think that I am. But there it is. My man Wyatt on the other hand, no idea where he learned the trade, but Holy Lady, if he didn’t prefer the station he has – I’ve offered him higher – he’d be ruling us all.’

‘He was always like that,’ Walsh said, daring to join the conversation. ‘I remember him as a little one, he’d come up with his family sometimes into the tavern, make friends with all the sailors from Ygres Sur. Always came back with a satchel full of enough trade goods to make you think he was a merchant.’

‘That does sound like him,’ Murtagh said. ‘I can just see it, giving his family coffee and the mangoes we hardly ever see like it’s nothing at all.’

‘Aye. Exactly like that. He had eyes full of secrets as a child.’

‘Not much has changed.’ Murtagh and Walsh shared a smile, and Mildmay was watching him with something calculating on his face, but he seemed curious now. It wasn’t the bitter scowl of before.

The conversation turned to the fickle Grimglass weather, and then after that to the storm-damaged farmhouses and fences which Kay had sought a team of people to assist with repairing. My understanding was that in most places, especially Corambis, such damage would be left to the farmer, in charge of hiring and paying for tradesmen, and if one couldn’t afford it, they simply had damaged property. Kay believed it built community spirit to have a volunteer team who would be willing to come together and assist in their free time.

‘Caloxa,’ Murtagh said softly, ‘did have its merits.’

‘It’s not dead yet,’ Adelais said. ‘You know the Caloxans will never let it die. Best you find a way to integrate those merits instead of pretending they don’t exist.’

‘We’re trying,’ Murtagh said. ‘You’re right, of course. A people who fought a war they had no chance of winning for as long as they did? Leave them to become bitter enough and they’ll just form Insurgencies again.’

It was a pleasure after that to watch Adelais converse on Bernathan and Caloxan politics as well as any journalist or low-level politician. She had the passion and the understanding, and Murtagh had the direct knowledge of what was happening in the highest levels of the Convocation. Even Mildmay looked interested, though neither of us knew enough of their history – it was muddled and lengthy – to interject with any confidence.

‘Right now we’re trying to convince their own merchants to rally in favour of extending rail into Caloxa. At the very least, it means we could get soldiers down to assist them with the Usara.’

It was my understanding that Kay, unusually in Corambis but not so much in Caloxa, was half-Usaran. The Caloxans and Usarans had a history of raping the other in their vicious wars, and Kay had sprung out of such a union only to join the Caloxan-Usaran war at an absurdly young age. But Kay had made it clear that there weren’t many options when one grew up in the thick of violent battles, watching the Usarans desecrate the dead, knowing that it was priesthood, war or death that awaited him.

‘But we can’t tell them that,’ Murtagh said. ‘Because they don’t want our men fighting alongside them. Kay says they’re stubborn fools, and hearing that from _Kay_ is quite something, let me tell you.’

‘You’re all stubborn fools,’ Adelais said, rolling her eyes. ‘Every last one of you. If you’re not stubborn, you’re stubbornly holding to being weak, instead.’

Mildmay’s eyes gleamed with good humour then, Murtagh and I laughed aloud, and Walsh looked offended, though I knew he was coming around to Adelais.

Dessert was a rice pudding I hadn’t eaten before, filled with spices and dried fruits, finished with plums soaked in port. Murtagh was full of praise for Adelais’ cooking skills, and she accepted it as her due. Mildmay, Walsh and I were too busy eating to do much more than nod in agreement.

After dinner, Adelais went off to see to Langonec’s ‘second dinner’ which appeared to just be molasses, cut apple and herbs that she foraged just for him. Mildmay engaged Walsh in a conversation about extending the hot water plumbing outside with the possibility of building a cottage or something similar for either Adelais or Walsh to stay in. It gave Murtagh and I an excuse to retire upstairs.

There was a time – most of my life really – where I would not have felt embarrassed to be heading away with a lover in full view of others. But when it was Mildmay, my cheeks flamed. Once, I’d flaunted my relationship with Gideon around Mildmay, as if to say _See? See what you’re missing out on?_ And sometimes simply to make him squirm and make him uncomfortable. I knew he hated listening to us in the evenings, and the nights I bothered to remember he existed in the tiny room next to us, I felt a spiteful satisfaction and never a single shred of guilt.

Now, I knew Mildmay couldn’t hear us at all, the lighthouse was soundproofed to the point that Mildmay was talking about creating some kind of communication system, like rigged bells with strings that followed along the already installed pipes. Yet with Murtagh at my back as we walked to the elevator, I was acutely aware that Mildmay knew why Murtagh was here, and he knew what we were going to get up to. Well, he likely assumed that I was the one who fucked Murtagh. I tried to ignore the way it pricked at me, but it was like an infection I couldn’t shed.

Murtagh’s hand went possessively to the small of my back as soon as we stepped into the elevator. He stood close, and even though I was taller, his presence was undeniable. The pulley began to slow as we approached my floor of the lighthouse, his hand slipped down over the seat of my pants and stayed there. When I stared down at him, he kept looking ahead, pretending he wasn’t doing anything at all.

‘If you need to shower, you’d best do that now,’ Murtagh said, removing his hand and leaving my skin feeling somehow cold even though it wasn’t, as we walked into my living space.

He’d already brought his pack upstairs and went straight to it, opening it and looking inside. I hesitated briefly, thinking to talk him out of the spanking. The idea was viscerally humiliating, and ever since he’d mentioned it, I felt apprehensive. The fact was I wasn’t as used to it as being whipped or flogged, but even though it was so much tamer than so much of what I’d experienced, it was childish in a way that felt repellent.

‘Go on, Felix,’ Murtagh said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.

I scowled at him, and then didn’t bother grabbing any clothing as I walked towards the shower. If he wanted me dressed, he would have told me.

‘Yes, Sir,’ I said.

‘Good boy,’ he said after me, and I closed the bathroom door and saw how red my cheeks were in the mirror and exhaled heavily. The man was determined to ruin me and we both knew it. What shocked me was how much I still wanted it, even when dread dominated.

In the shower, I thought back to last time, how it was seemingly effortless, the way he tore me apart. I had to remember that the blindfold with the metal spikes wasn’t his in the first place. That the harder options weren’t actually his preference. And as I turned my face up to the hot spray, soaping between my legs for the second time, I tried to remind myself that it would be fine.

But he still saw the pieces of me and pulled them apart regardless of what his preferences were. He had, after all, seen my loathing of flogging and then brought a flogger into our play. He’d made me come to the sensations of it. I’d not been able to think about it too much, because it made me wonder what else he could undo.

There were things in my mind that were permanent. Wounds that were rigid scars, as unyielding as the scar in my calf. How I felt about flogging was meant to be inflexible, always traumatic.

A part of me wanted to bed down into stubbornness, prove to him that there was nothing he could do to make this evening good for either of us, prove that choosing games based on how humiliated I was at the idea of them was a fool’s game.

There it was, though, I really did seek to take power away from him at almost every moment. He knew it, I knew it, and he still tolerated me all the same.

Last time I’d walked out naked, this time I couldn’t seem to leave the towel behind, wrapped tightly around my torso. I thought he’d make a comment on it, but he didn’t even look at me as I walked out of the bathroom. He knelt on my bed, attaching ropes to one side of the headboard in a more complicated tie than I was used to seeing. His pack was by the pillows.

‘I want you to kneel,’ Murtagh said, pointing at the bottom corner of the bed that was closest to me. ‘And I want you to face the other corner.’ He pointed to indicate where I was supposed to look.

‘Yes, Sir.’

It was an odd position, but I did it nonetheless. The instability of the mattress had me grimacing as I wobbled, my calf wanting more beneath it. I used to be graceful, so much more graceful than I was now.

Murtagh looked at me, then came over and with one hand on the small of my back, and another at my side, he helped me further onto the bed.

‘In the future, if I ask you to do something like this, I want your shins and feet supported. Not hanging off the edge,’ he said, reprimanding me.

‘Yes, Sir,’ I said, refusing to look at him.

‘Oh, you don’t like this at all, do you?’ Murtagh said, tracing my scarred spine with the backs of his knuckles. His hand twisted and he undid the place where I’d fastened the towel, and it fell away. He dragged it off the bed and let it fall to the corner of the red and brown rug on the floor. And then his fingers trailed over the back of one thigh, making the muscles twitch, until he could find the space behind my knee at the top of the knotted scar.

A hand around my torso, catching me as he dug his fingers in to the tension there. That first shock of pain was always the hardest, even when I did it to myself.

‘There, there,’ he said, like he was soothing a child. ‘It’s better than it was last time. You’ve been doing this for yourself?’

I nodded, then realised he probably expected more. ‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Has it been helping?’

‘It seizes less, Sir,’ I said, and then realised it was true, my eyebrows furrowing. It was helping. I did it often because I liked awakening a pain that seemed to help, because there was some visceral satisfaction in knowing I was helping myself by hurting myself. But the cramps came less often, they hardly woke me at night anymore. I still couldn’t do anything like stand on my tiptoes, or really stretch the leg, but there was a difference.

He continued to massage down until he reached the muscles on either side of the scar. He ran his fingers over the scar itself, too lightly to be therapeutic. Curiosity or something else. Perhaps it was just that he knew what it was to be permanently marked with something, the scar on his arm was brutal, it was amazing to me that he could still move it and use it. He would have needed to work to get back any utility at all.

‘All right,’ Murtagh said. ‘Let’s see what it’s like for the good little boys in good little houses, shall we? Perhaps you’ll cry for me, darling.’

I stared levelly at him, and his blank expression cracked within about ten seconds, revealing the glee of his unleashed sadism. I would have easily shared in it, if it wasn’t at the expense of my own humiliation.

‘I know, I know,’ Murtagh said, grasping the long lead of rope he’d tied to the headboard and moving until he was sitting at the end of the bed before me, holding the rope in the hand furthest away from me. ‘But you practically gift-wrapped it for me, little rabbit. Now over my knees, if you please.’

The position suddenly made sense. I took a deep breath and pretended I was unbothered as I moved forwards and lay over his lap, resting on my forearms and staring ahead into the rest of my bedroom, the curvature of the stone wall, the shadows furthest from the fire in its hearth.

‘Cross your wrists,’ Murtagh said, his tone firm but soft.

He secured the rope around them firmly, and my jaw worked as I realised it would make it impossible for me slide off the bed headfirst if he had my hips secure with an arm or hand around them. Escape would be impossible.

‘This tie will bruise if you work too hard against the rope,’ Murtagh said. ‘If you want the bruises, then that’s fine. But if you don’t, perhaps you’ll just have to practice some self-discipline.’

A long pause where I shifted my wrists in the rope and realised he was right. And then Murtagh grabbed my still-drying hair in a sudden, tight grip and I gasped from the stinging pains at the side of my scalp as he jerked my head back. The confidence, the roughness that wasn’t reckless, it had me hardening against his clothed thigh.

‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’ve stopped acknowledging me, Felix?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘Did you realise?’

‘No, Sir,’ I said honestly. But it was true. Even now I was fighting him.

He pushed me back down again, and then spent a minute adjusting my position until my cock slid between his legs, until my ass was arced up over a thigh and one of his hands rested at my lower back and the other stroked over the backs of my legs.

‘Yes,’ he said, his voice deeper, a syllable of pure appreciation. My head dropped forwards and I stared down at the bed instead. My fingers twitched, wanted to fidget, but all I could manage in the current restraints was hooking my little fingers together. ‘When you think about it, this makes sense, doesn’t it? You talk back, you’re recalcitrant. You are exactly the kind of shadow that could do with a little maintenance spanking every morning, aren’t you?’

I couldn’t tell if it was outrage or shame or something else that had me staring at the bed like I wanted to set it on fire. Instead of spanking me – like I expected – he pinched up some of the skin of my inner thigh so cruelly I yelped.

‘Answer me,’ he ordered. ‘Be honest.’

‘I’m not that kind of shadow, Sir,’ I said.

Murtagh laughed and then let go of the skin he’d pinched, rubbing it instead. I knew it would bruise.

‘No? An obedient boy then? Shall I call you my obedient little boy, Felix?’

‘Fuck,’ I muttered under my breath, and my forehead dropped to the blanket. ‘No, Sir.’

‘Oh, my darling, even the backs of your shoulders are turning red. Look at that.’ He reached up and moved my hair out of the way, stroking fingers tenderly over the back of my neck. ‘It’s a treat having you in my lap, Felix. And while you’re testing me like a new horse about to be broken in, you still gave me an honest answer, didn’t you? That would have been near impossible the first time I met you. Maybe you _are_ a good, obedient little boy.’

It was a knocking, clamouring thing rising inside of me with his words. The praise so sorely needed. His mocking and teasing, but knowing that he meant some of it, and I thought of Keeper, I thought of my childhood, I thought of how I was never a good little _anything_. I was good for drowning, I was good for a nun’s scourge, and being beaten to within an inch of my life, and – yes – learning how to suck cock like a champion.

I wanted to take all the words Murtagh was addressing me with and turn them to poison, tear him apart with them. Make sure he knew all the ways in which I was not good, or little, or obedient. I had _never_ been those things. My breath shook. But he knew at least some of it. He knew I’d been drowned as a child, he knew I’d turned to prostitution early. Not the details, no. But he knew.

He knew and he still dared to say I was good. And for some reason, hearing it in general didn’t touch me in the way these specific words did.

‘No, Sir,’ I said. It felt illicit, criminal even, disagreeing with someone in his position. Malkar would have tortured me just for waiting a rebellious second too long, for giving him a _look_. He could spot my tawdry, cheap need to fight back even when I was certain I was trying to do my best.

Murtagh’s hand moved in a long line down my spine – over my scars – back to my ass. ‘What did they do when they spanked you, Felix? We’re talking about clients, aren’t we? You must have found it very tame compared to everything else you could be hit with.’

‘Indeed, Sir,’ I said.

‘Well? What did they do?’

His hand was rubbing over the curves of my ass now. A big, broad hand, still mildly calloused in places, and I wondered why and decided it didn’t matter. Murtagh had a way of making me feel soothed, even when my heart raced with anticipation, dread, and a thick, thick shame that Murtagh was choosing to do this over literally anything else.

‘They were often the easier clients,’ I said finally, throat so tight that I had to clear it. ‘Sometimes they made me count and thank them, Sir.’

‘Oh, that old chestnut,’ Murtagh said, laughing. ‘What, count to ten? ‘Thank you, Sir, please may I have another?’ Did you have to pretend to be affected?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ Felix said, and found myself smiling at the shared mockery, even as I didn’t want to concede anything to him. ‘As though I’d be tearful or apologetic or whatever they wished after ten or twenty or even fifty strikes. What do these people think their hands are made of?’

‘I’m not going to make you count,’ Murtagh said, poking his fingertips between my ass cheeks, the touch invasive and so shockingly casual that I wouldn’t have been surprised if he slid a dry finger into me. My cock jerked between my legs at the thought. ‘And I’m not going to make you thank me for each one. Holy Lady, perhaps the scarring on your back intimidated them.’

‘Perhaps. One brought a book once and showed me the scene he wanted to recreate. A young woman bawling after fifteen strikes, Sir, I struggled not to laugh.’

‘So even then, you didn’t really respect many of them at all, did you, Felix?’

Something in me went very still, caught out, and in that moment he raised his hand and brought it down, a moderate strike. It didn’t hurt. I found that even if a tarquin went in with a cold start – hard and vicious from the beginning – if they were only using their hand it was usually just heat and sting at first. But it shocked me nonetheless and I almost twisted around to look at him, but my arms were in too awkward a position to brace me properly for it, wrists crossed and bound as they were.

‘Likely respect only came on the back of extreme pain or extreme fear,’ Murtagh continued. ‘It’s effective, I suppose.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ I said automatically.

A round of smacks followed, neither particularly hard, but none light or testing either. At the end – more than fifteen, more than twenty, perhaps around forty – I could feel the warmth infusing my skin afterwards, tingling and bright. But to be over his knee while he was still fully dressed and naked, to know he was only using one hand and one to brace me lightly, to feel like I wasn’t even worth _effort…_

It shouldn’t have been hard to endure, but his words rattled around in my head.

‘Should I insult you by telling you how well you took it?’ Murtagh said. ‘We’ve not even started yet. But your ass does take it well. Look at that, pinking up nicely. Don’t you think?’

‘If you say so, Sir.’

‘I _do.’_

He twisted and reached for his pack, dragging it towards himself. He rummaged around inside of it, brought some items out and put them down by my legs so that I couldn’t see them. And then two minutes later, his fingertips slid between my ass cheeks, this time cold with lubricant. Only seconds passed before a finger lodged deep within me, and my hands clenched. He normally prepared me slowly, but that had been a chilly, rude shock.

‘All this scarring,’ he muttered, pulling back and playing with my entrance, the pad of his finger teasing and rubbing, then withdrawing completely and circling my hole before plunging in once more. A sound caught in my throat, and I decided it didn’t matter after all if Murtagh wanted to spank me. ‘Someone hasn’t been taking care of you. Little boys shouldn’t be treated like this, should they?’

I changed my mind. It turned out it very much _did_ matter.

‘Sir,’ I said shakily. ‘Must you?’

‘Answer the question, Felix.’

‘I think you’ll find it doesn’t matter how I’m treated because I’m not a little boy.’

‘No, you’ve established that, haven’t you? Good little boys are the ones who get spanked in the good little houses, apparently. I think if they _were_ good – personally – they probably wouldn’t be getting their asses paddled, but what do I know? Still, if that was _your_ philosophy, what does it mean that you’re over my knee, letting me spank you? Your lovely cock hard between my legs? By your definition, Felix, what does that make you?’

I opened my mouth, and he withdrew the finger and then brought his hand down on my ass so hard that the sound cracked through the room. My eyes were wide. It still wasn’t truly painful, but that had shoved me down hard, a blow that would have knocked my whole body forwards if I hadn’t been over his knee.

More of them came, alternating between cheeks, though not evenly, not in any way I could lose myself in. He focused more on one side until the tingling, bright sting gave way to something deeper. My arms shifted in spite of myself, then my legs. No, it wasn’t a whip or a cane or some other implement, but the tenor of sensation was evolving and I didn’t like that I couldn’t predict it. Because tarquins in Melusine were either true sadists and went straight to corporal instruments and other torment, or they were tame, and they spanked me twenty times and somehow bought my performance of contrition and they paid and thought they mattered a single whit to me.

Murtagh didn’t stop. He shifted the blows down towards my upper thighs and I grunted, feet shifting, knees digging down.

And then, minutes having passed, he stopped all at once, pushing that single finger back into me once more, like he was trying to shove it all the way through me.

It wasn’t until that moment I realised I’d broken out into a hot, flushed sweat. I swallowed, then opened my mouth wide into the bed and dragged down a long breath. It wasn’t warmth in my ass anymore, but a scouring heat. It wasn’t mild tingling, but a heavy, swollen sensation. Not quite pain, not quite stinging, something in between.

I was certain that almost anyone else would call it _pain._

‘Ah, what a good boy you are Felix, taking it well. It’s not so bad, is it? You don’t have to perform and pretend to be in agony for me.’

‘No, Sir,’ I murmured, trying to pin down what he’d left behind. I was harder than ever, because warmth and heat and my ass being filled and played with left me ready for him. His words had already cracked something open, and I was confused too, I realised belatedly that I felt somehow fragile, younger than usual. But his finger thrusting rhythmically inside me, not enough and yet perfect as it was, distracted me from the worst of it.

The nails of other hand dragged over one of the most tormented parts of my ass, and I grunted at the soreness that followed. A small jangle of alarm spiked. I’d expected this to be humiliating, but easy. I wasn’t prepared for it to be humiliating and physically taxing.

Two fingers pushed inside of me, and I moaned softly, wondering if the spanking had stopped. Enough to take seriously, but still bearable.

‘Are you my good little boy, Felix?’

My jaw ached and I wanted to cover my face with my hands, realised belatedly that one of my wrists was chafing against the ropes. I’d been bracing myself more than I realised, as though trying to balance out the sensations in the rest of me.

‘Sir,’ I said.

‘By your own philosophy you are, so I’d just like to hear you say it. My, you’ve set up quite a paradox here, haven’t you?’

‘Since you’re the flame, that shouldn’t be an issue, Sir. Unless you’d like me to be in control after all?’

My upper back tensed in a flinch I couldn’t control as a result of being so daring, but all Murtagh did was burst into bright, generous laughter. I shuddered.

‘I will never understand – but always _deeply_ appreciate – why shadows will talk this way to me when I have them at my mercy. I’m very aware of who holds the control, my boy, but you can forgive a little teasing can’t you? Besides, I like being in your head, Felix. But let’s see what we can do about this latest round of fire you’re giving me.’

 _I like being in your head, Felix._ That reminded me of Malkar too, so much that I didn’t quite register the fingers withdrawing. It was the first blow that had me snapping back into the present with a gasp.

Now it wasn’t warmth or a sting or something mild. The skin he was spanking was bruised and I knew it would be at the very least red, blood vessels likely broken, and suddenly nerves that had told me everything was fine, shouted something very different.

And he didn’t stop, he didn’t ask me to count, and he focused in on that one spot from earlier that felt far more tender and raw than before. I couldn’t escape the need to move, it would just be better if I moved my hips just an _inch…_

He laughed again, the sound much darker, and his hand followed that spot no matter how I squirmed, his other arm firming around me.

Agonising minutes where I fought with myself not to give him the satisfaction of making any noises at all. But that meant I had to bite down into the blanket and focus on my breathing and left my lower legs free to lift and then thump down into the bed. I couldn’t seem to hold still.

He stopped and I waited for his fingers to slip inside of me, lifting shakily up from the blanket, short and shallow breaths cold in my throat. It was on one of those inhales that his hand drove against my skin again and I cried out, shocked and unable to stop myself, and then dropped my head to the bed in sheer annoyance and apprehension.

‘Do you want to count now, Felix?’ Murtagh said softly, dangerously.

I shook my head.

The strike after that, and I managed to get one of my legs off his thigh and braced against the ground before he wrestled me back into position. Pain was radiating into my spine now, down my legs, into the backs of my knees. My cock was hard, but the arousal behind it was muddied, dark, and I felt dizzy from the sensory feedback.

‘I suspect…’ Murtagh said, rubbing his hand flat over my ass like he was comforting me, though it didn’t feel remotely comforting, ‘that when most of your clients had you, they sought to do the maximum amount of damage they could with the worst implements as quickly as they could. That makes you exceptionally skilled at withstanding bright bursts of pain and agony that might last, oh – I don’t know – ten minutes? Twenty? But a good flame will know how to break through that. It’s mostly about tackling your endurance, because everyone has a point where it shatters.’

‘So, torture then, Sir,’ I muttered, my voice strained.

‘If you like,’ he said without a pause. ‘Some of the principles are the same. Do you know the difference, Felix?’

I hated those questions. I hated that hand pretending at care, when I knew now that we weren’t done. Each pause lasted long enough to let the inflammation really settle in, to let the skin swell to its most taut point. He was seasoning the pain with patience.

It was something Malkar would do.

The next strikes that followed could have been moderate, but I had no way of knowing. My body reacted like each one was severe. My voice was choked out by my own breath as I gasped, and my shoulders jerked automatically, trying to get one of my hands free to stop him. When I tried to rock my hips out of the way, he aimed at the worst spot at the bottom of one ass cheek until I cried out long and despairing into the blankets. And then he stopped again, but the pain echoed through me, building on itself.

‘Do you know the difference between this and torture, Felix?’ Murtagh said again.

‘I so…’ I had to stop and catch my breath, and then grit out a sound of fury when he stroked over my ass again. ‘I so appreciate you taking times like these to teach valuable lessons, Sir.’

‘I have a singular ability to not hear irony or sarcasm at times like this. So I thank you sincerely, Felix, and we’ll just try this again, shall we?’

Any protest I made was drowned out immediately, and then my own cries stopped me from being able to disagree with him. My entire body was overheated, sweat trickling down the back of my neck, prickling at both sides of my forehead, and now the spanking wasn’t pretending to be anything other than an awful, bruising pain.

The cries gave way to whimpers, and then thinking I could somehow kick him when I wasn’t in any kind of position to manage it. My eyes burned, and I was horrified at the thought that he might really get to see it, me crying over his lap while he spanked me.

He stopped by pushing two fingers into me, digging down too hard into my prostate so that I shouted, and I hunched over him and shook, worn out and exhausted.

‘There’s not actually much of a difference between this and torture,’ Murtagh said. ‘I’ll be there for you afterwards, but torturers do that sometimes. I’ll look after you, but they can do that too. But you let me do this, Felix. This is a torture you want, even when you hate it.’

He rubbed my lower back this time, and that did feel soothing, but it unravelled me and I went limp with a small, desperate noise. His fingers massaged over my prostate and I felt like I was on fire.

‘You do take a spanking _very_ well,’ Murtagh purred. ‘Holy Lady, just look at you. Beautiful. And I know you want to be good for me, and obedient, you’ve said it yourself. My good little boy. You can give that to me, can’t you?’

I was nodding, hardly paying attention.

‘Tell me you’re my good little boy, Felix.’

The words filtered through, and I rued the fact that there was enough rebellion left in me to not say the words I knew I should. Because I knew what it meant. Knew even as he withdrew his fingers.

‘My poor hand!’ he said, though I could hear the smile in his voice. ‘You know, I haven’t had a workout like this in a while.’

 _‘Please,’_ I said, my voice breaking.

‘Shhh, don’t worry, we’ll come back to it. I’ll help you.’

_‘Sir.’_

‘I do like it when you beg me, darling. But I like it when you’re writhing over my lap even more. It’s the best of both worlds, isn’t it? For me, anyway.’

He started spanking me again, the motions swift and light and never letting any part of my skin escape him for long. I heard a dull banging sound, and realised distantly that it was the sound of my wrists in the ropes moving the headboard, as I yanked them over and over again. The pain of it was carving into me, as intrusive or invasive as a dry cock could be. I keened into the bed, my voice cracking into nothing at the end.

And then my chest heaved on a sob, another, and even through the reddened, thick haze of pain, I was shocked at myself.

But it was Murtagh, and I shouldn’t have been shocked at all.

‘There, little rabbit,’ he said, as he stopped. He grabbed a handful of my ass, twisted up the skin, and then had to hook both arms around me as I tried to scramble away from him. ‘It’s all right. We can’t keep this up for much longer, your skin can’t take much more. As it is, I think you’re going to be carrying some bruises for at least a week. Come on, little rabbit, deep breaths now.’

I couldn’t seem to manage it, every sip of breath skimming the surface of my lungs.

 _‘Felix,’_ he said firmly, and his hand came up and grasped the back of my neck, pushing my head down. ‘Concentrate.’

I nodded without thinking, but the deeper breaths didn’t come for some time, and I couldn’t stop the weak, heavy exhales, the ones that sounded like sobs not quite voiced.

‘The problem with whipping the living daylights out of someone,’ Murtagh said, ‘is that you get to blood _so_ quickly you literally can’t keep going without killing someone. Spanking like this is different. As you can see.’

I nodded again, glad for his hand pushing my head down. It was an anchor I needed.

‘That said, I am so impressed with your endurance. Knowing you, you probably think you’ve withstood nothing at all. But this is a hard session, Felix. It would be hard for anyone.’

I was trying not to think of anything at all. Still, I liked that tone of voice. I liked when he spoke to me in that reassuring manner. I liked the hand gripping me at the base of my skull, curving around into tender skin, firm enough to be another signal amongst the throbbing, heavy pain. One that didn’t hurt.

‘Tell me you’re my good little boy, Felix.’

‘I’m your good little boy, Sir,’ I said. Any shame I felt over it had been burned out of existence by his hand and the pain in my own body.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You didn’t get this because I was punishing you, but because you like pleasing me, don’t you?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ I said, nodding as much as I could within the stricture of that hand keeping my head down.

‘Poor little rabbit, look at what I’ve done to you.’ He let go of my neck to stroke fingers appreciatively over the curves of my ass, and I squirmed weakly, my voice breaking on another sob. ‘And _that,_ is just too good not to fuck.’

The idea that it wasn’t yet over was like a blow, but I existed in some other strata where he was pleased with me and appreciative and rubbing his hands over my flanks as he slid out from under me and then got off the bed. He positioned me so that I was bent over it, the tie at my wrists perfect for keeping me in place.

The cold lubricant felt wonderful as soon as it touched my skin, but I was too dazed to do much more than keep my knees locked and focus on each next breath. The only things that made any sense to me were those hands at my shoulders, my sides, my hips. And then his fingers giving way to the girth of his cock.

I jerked forwards when his pelvis and pubic hair ground hard into the back of my ass, head coming up in a full body response to the reawakening of the worst of the pain. But even as I tried to get away from it – not that he let me – my cock was hardening again, a coiling heat twisting up through me, almost as unbearable as the pain was.

Murtagh fucked with hard, deep strokes that never let me forget about the pain of the spanking. But each time his cock slid over my prostate, I was swept up towards my own release until finally the only thing stopping me from coming – trembling and mouth open – was knowing that I needed permission.

I begged him then, my voice breaking, and he touched my cock with his fingers, glancing over it and then took me in a grip so hard I couldn’t have stopped myself if I tried.

‘Come on, Felix,’ he said, keeping me in that tight, pulsing grip that was one more thing I couldn’t withstand.

He had to hold me up when I came, my knees buckling. And then he lifted me and kept me at the angle he wanted for the rest of his thrusts. All the complicated things I’d been thinking before were gone. I was just a dazed creature needing for him to come, for him to stop, wanting to sleep, to be told I did well. I existed in a space of half-awareness, groaning in pain and satisfaction when he finally came deep inside me.

And then I didn’t have to pay attention to anything at all. A client might have demanded it. Lorenzo never let me disappear into this space, saying it was useless and unnecessary. But with Murtagh, it was like I was set free, and I lay over the bed – torso supporting me – as he withdrew and undid the ropes at my wrists, muttering something about how bruised they were, even though they didn’t hurt compared to my ass.

He helped me onto the bed, belly down, and smoothed a salve over my ass as I twitched but didn’t wriggle away. And then he vanished elsewhere in the room, and I vanished elsewhere in my mind.

When he returned, he called me his good boy, he told me I was perfect, lovely, incredible, and more. Each word like another cushion beneath me, bearing me up, helping me drift away.

‘Felix?’ he said at one point. ‘Are you falling asleep, little rabbit?’

It was the last thing I heard.

*

I woke to a taut, monstrous thing twisting up from the arch of my foot all the way to the midpoint of my back. I screamed before I was fully awake, my scarred calf jerking towards my thigh as it seized horribly, and as I rolled into a sitting position to try and find a way to make the excruciating pain of it stop, all the bruising in my ass and thighs woke up too and I cried out again.

I wasn’t aware of Murtagh at all in the dark room until his hands were on me, his voice loud, my name repeated over and over again.

‘It’s a cramp,’ he was saying. ‘Felix, it’s a cramp. You have to let me help you.’

He was swearing, and then he was jerking my hand away from my own leg where I felt like I was trying to pin my own calf to my thigh, giving in to whatever the pain wanted. And as I fought him, blind from the pain of it, thinking I’d freshly ripped it open all over again, he shoved a hand beneath my knee and kept my arms away, digging his knuckles in above the scar tissue, where it felt like muscle had been replaced with broken glass.

I twisted towards him and bit savagely into his arm to stop myself from screaming again, to stop myself from reaching for my magic, dimly recognising that he was trying to help, and he knew more about this than I did.

‘Okay,’ he said, his voice surprisingly shaky. ‘Okay, that’s good. That’s good. I know, I know it hurts. I’m so sorry, darling. I should have massaged it properly before we started. I didn’t know it could be like this. I’m sorry.’

I was whimpering into his skin, mouth thick with spit already, it had flooded into my mouth on the back of nausea. And though my leg had seized this badly once or twice before, I’d never felt so small because of it, never so fractious or fragile.

‘I know,’ Murtagh soothed as I shuddered into him. And then I rolled onto one hip because the pain from my ass was filtering through as well.

His fingers moved carefully but firmly into the muscles at the back of my leg, and then he was carefully easing it forward at the knee, even as I resisted him, terrified of the lance of agony stabbing into me like a steel bolt again.

‘Easy now,’ Murtagh said. ‘We’re going to take this slow. Here, let’s pause, shall we?’

He moved his fingers back into the muscle and massaged up until finally he just dragged me towards him to get into whatever band of agony was stretched from the outside of my knee to my hip.

‘If it’s affected your whole leg like this, then it’s likely twisting your back up too,’ Murtagh said, but the words were detached, as though he was making an observation to himself rather than me. ‘Ah, sweetheart, it’s so unfair, isn’t it? And you were feeling so good. Has it been this bad before?’

I nodded, even as his words unpicked the rest of me. Whatever pretence of knowing what I was doing that I thought to grab at, went up in smoke at his words. And then, weak and shaking, I began to sob against his chest, each sound tearing from a place I didn’t know existed and hoped to never acknowledge again.

‘Sweetheart,’ he said, even as the pain in my leg was easing to the point where it was fine. It was manageable. I’d never had a cramp that severe ease up so quickly. ‘Of course, of course you’d be upset. Does your leg feel better? Yes? Good. Here, come on, let’s lie down again. On your hip now, that’s it.’

He pulled me close to him, tucking my forehead in the crook of his shoulder and neck, and I thought – of all things – of Jolene. My sister who had died in the fire. Who loved me even when I was wretched and post-drowning, when I was sharp and knife-like, when I still spoke with the worst of Lower City accents and we were both just two children among the many owned by Keeper, to be killed at a moment’s notice for some insignificant infraction, brothers and sisters not by the blood within us, but through the blood he made us shed.

But I remembered her arms around me at night, I remembered how small I felt, how endlessly sure she’d been in those dark evenings, and I felt that again now. A reassurance that curled around my terror and made room for it, didn’t pretend it away.

Murtagh smoothed his hand over my hair and spoke soft words to me, even as the storm of emotions tapered down. I thought to apologise, I felt laid bare by shame, but after the humiliation he’d taken apart throughout the evening, it didn’t last long. My breathing slowed, I shivered into him and held onto him and had no concept of how tightly I was hanging on.

‘That’s it,’ Murtagh said. ‘My good boy, it’s safe, you can sleep. It shouldn’t happen again. But if it does, I’ll be here. Little rabbit, I’ll be right here.’

It was more effective than any sleeping draught I’d ever taken.


	16. Peas in a Pod

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's like, completely normal to first introduce your plot about 60% into the story right? Hahaha, ha........ /sweeps the story under the rug furtively

_Felix_

*

I twitched at the fingers stroking through my hair and woke groggily, my entire body aching, a faint sound in my throat before I could stop myself. I opened my eyes to Murtagh fully dressed and sitting on the side of the bed, leaning over me and gently moving my hair back from my face.

‘I’ve never seen you sleep so deeply,’ he said.

‘What time is it, Sir?’ It wouldn’t have surprised me if it was somehow the following year. I pushed up onto my hip and gasped at the pain that echoed through the muscles of my ass and upper thighs. ‘Goodness. That doesn’t feel kind at all.’

Murtagh’s lips quirked, but his amber eyes were still soft. ‘It’s late morning. I have some breakfast from Adelais if you’re hungry. How’s your leg? May I look it over?’

Then I remembered why my eyes felt so scratchy and dry, and resisted the urge to sag back into the bed in the hope that the mattress would absorb me entirely. Ah, of course, he’d seen one of _those_ cramps. They’d driven me to tears before, but as no one had ever been around to witness them before I could pretend they never happened. I opened my mouth to tell him not to bother, but there was something in the intent way he looked at me that made me give way.

‘If you must, Sir.’

‘I did ask, but thank you. Here, you take this and roll onto your front for me.’ He handed me a plate with one of the savoury pastries that had a whole boiled egg baked inside, along with cheese and mince. Normally such a thing was far too rich for me in the morning, but I was famished even after the meal from the night before, and I rolled fully onto my stomach and began to tear delicately at it, eating strips of flaky pastry first.

Murtagh drew back the blankets and then carefully ghosted his hand over the curve of my ass cheek. It was as though he was skimming fingers over rug-burn and I gasped.

‘Oh ho, you should see it,’ Murtagh said. ‘We need more mirrors up here. Darling, I didn’t go easy on you at all last night. How does it feel this morning?’

It felt like a sharp stinging pain flooding through me and my cock paying attention to the fact that despite the pain, Murtagh was still touching me. I chewed for much longer than I needed to. After I could hold back no longer and swallowed, Murtagh gripped my ass up in both of his hands and squeezed. I yelped and then ducked my head sideways into the bed, gritting my teeth.

‘It’s fine,’ Murtagh drawled. ‘You’re doing a good job of showing me.’

‘You… You are _merciless,_ Sir,’ I choked out.

‘I know, I know. But I’ll let you be. If I keep this up, that poor leg of yours won’t get any rest at all. I think you should see a physician-practicioner.’

I stayed silent as he let go and the throbbing pain was thankfully already subsiding. He ran his warm hands over my calf and ankle, over my thigh and up along the outside of it to my hip, then carefully started pressing his fingers in.

‘How do you know to do this, Sir?’

‘It’s anatomy,’ he said, pushing certain areas of muscle like he was testing how much give they had. The sensations varied from a mild pain, to something sharp and unyielding. But he never pushed each section for too long. ‘As a soldier, you learn it in order to know where all those arteries are, the muscles and ligaments that are easiest to sever and do the maximum amount of damage. Then you learn it because no one tells you how much you _hurt_ after days and nights out in the cold with only campfires to keep you warm – if you’re lucky to have those – and shoes that don’t measure up to permafrost and muscles gone stiff from swinging weapons and shields into armour until your whole body forgets kindness.’

I stared at the pillow before me. He talked about being a soldier usually when he was in his element as a flame, when I was too dazed to really pay attention. I couldn’t recall him ever talking about it in so much detail before. For some reason what I’d imagined was not what he described. There was more glory in what I’d seen in my head.

‘And then you learn it because your body turns against you, and some other soldier shows you a trick or two, and you pass it on, and eventually you have this haphazard collection of what to do to make sure you can keep swinging that sword.’

He dragged his knuckles along a line of tension and then pushed in. I jerked, helpless, and he swore quietly under his breath and pulled back until I didn’t feel like I had to clench my jaw to bear it.

‘I’m hardly applying any pressure,’ he said, as though disgusted. ‘This is why you need a physician-practicioner. I’m no professional at it, and you can’t get to these areas properly yourself. It’s wonderful that you’re able to help it a bit, but regular treatments can keep these muscles limber for longer, retrain them so they’re less twisted up. Holy Lady, Felix, this was never anything other than an atrocious injury that should have seen you hospitalised at the least.’

‘There’s no hospital in Grimglass, Sir.’

He smacked the lower curve of my ass lightly, I hissed and ducked my head. He’d made his point.

‘I’m not familiar with hospitals, Sir,’ I said eventually. ‘Even the physician-practicioner system here is not what I’m used to, let alone magician-practicioners. Where I come from, healing magic is heretical.’

‘Whatever for? And don’t tell me _you’re_ so against heretical magic.’

I thought of the Obligation D’ame and wondered what it said about me that I felt far more able to cast that upon my own brother, than I felt able to learn even a shred of healing magic of any kind. I’d barely even looked into the theories. And in Corambis it was codified into the Institution as its own curriculum in partnership with the University. It wasn’t only legitimised, it was foundational.

‘A magician-practicioner once told me that they could help Mildmay. It didn’t even seem boastful, Sir.’

‘It wasn’t. They’d use surgery to reopen the scar where it’s pulled apart, and then stitch it together properly so that it would be seamless and closed. You wouldn’t even need a magician-practicioner, though they can help with surgical outcomes. At the very least, it would make it far easier for him to speak and smile. Did no one ever explain that to you both?’

I didn’t have anything to say. I suppose I would have found out if I’d bothered to ask. I was very stressed at the time. Mildmay was dying from Winter Fever. Magician-practicioner Priscilla Druce had stabilised him and helped him heal, it was likely that everything she’d been patient enough to share with me was real, not exaggerated. Perhaps it was that I knew that Mildmay seemed oddly averse to pursuing solutions. He knew more about Corambis than I did, he knew about its social structures, its medicine, and he’d interacted more with the people. Not once had he ever said that he was going to get his scar looked at.

Silence reigned as Murtagh kept working his fingers into my leg, all the way up over the side of my hip – where I still caught my breath as he barely nudged near my bruised ass – and then up to my lower back where he muttered something under his tongue that I suppose meant that was a mess as well.

I’d cried in his arms like a babe, and he was treating me no differently this morning. I couldn’t find it in me to feel awful over it. I hadn’t even apologised. I lay there for a couple minutes more, trying to decide if it was too late to apologise now, or if it was the kind of thing one didn’t need to apologise for.

‘I apologise for biting you, Sir,’ I managed finally. _And everything else._

‘Nonsense,’ Murtagh said. ‘Although, Holy Lady, you do have a grip on you, don’t you? But any soul could see that was only a shred of what you were experiencing. Those sorts of cramps, Felix… Have you had them before?’

‘Once or twice.’

‘I can’t tell if that means you have them all the time, or hardly ever.’

I scowled at the remnants of the pastry that I’d decided was too rich to contend with. But he wasn’t wrong.

‘Only two or three times. It does sometimes wake me at night, but usually it’s just the calf seizing and sometimes the arch of the foot at the same time. It’s not often it involves the spine. Truly.’

‘I believe you,’ Murtagh said, gently rubbing his knuckles over my back in reassurance before going back to testing all the muscles. ‘You know, even working on your calf more could be wakening up some of the other parts of your body that have been overcompensating all this time. But frankly – loath as I am to admit it – I contributed to it, having you tensing all over my lap like that and then bending you over the bed.’

‘But it’s never happened before, Sir,’ I said doggedly. ‘So nothing needs to change. Nothing between us.’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ Murtagh said. ‘If I find a practicioner for you to see, and you actually _see_ them, then nothing needs to change. All right, darling?’

I didn’t have the heart to fight him. After a while I lifted a hand in acceptance of his terms, then pushed the plate out of the way so that I could rest properly.

‘Good, good,’ he murmured, and it echoed through me, the way he’d called me his good little boy the night before. That still chased itself through me like a dog after its tail, trying to understand why it tore me up so much, why I needed it so badly. And he’d known. He’d noticed three words in a conversation and he’d _known_ what he could turn it into.

It scared me, how much he saw. And somehow, it reassured me too.

I felt no need to apologise for falling apart in his arms. It seemed that he wanted all of me. I couldn’t comprehend it, and I was sure he was going to abruptly change his mind at some point.

But he really seemed to want all of me.

*

We spent the morning in my bedroom. I dozed as Murtagh worked at my back, eventually sleeping all over again, and when I woke apologising, Murtagh had brought me lunch and we sat and ate together and it reminded me of eating in bed with Shannon. I almost said something, but couldn’t imagine any reason why Murtagh would want to hear about Shannon the morning after what we’d shared together.

I pulled my hair back in a long tail. For the first time in a while, I actually felt like styling my hair instead of just taming the curls. Murtagh watched me in the bathroom as I did it, offering generous, warm commentary about how beautiful my hair was, how stunning I was. I found a long-sleeved but somewhat threadbare shirt to hide the nasty bruises at my wrists, and for the first time wondered why I’d let my wardrobe get to such a shabby state.

Nothing helped those bruises at my ass. I turned to see them in the mirror and in some places the skin was an opaque black. I skimmed my fingers over the worst of it, staring in amazement. I realised he was right when he’d told me it was a difficult thing to endure. I was amazed I hadn’t bled.

‘How, pray tell, am I supposed to get my work done now? Sir?’ I said abruptly to Murtagh.

‘Standing?’ he said innocently.

I burst into breathless laughter. ‘Standing, Sir?’

‘You could take the week off,’ he said, standing and stretching like a great lion, before walking over to me and pulling my trousers up, taking obvious delight in pulling the fabric over my sensitive, bruised skin as my breathing hitched. ‘You could lie down and let Adelais bring you meals and read if you wanted. Or you could walk outside, among the wildflowers.’

‘And the rain,’ I added.

‘The rain and hail,’ he agreed. ‘Grimglass in all its unholy glory.’

‘It’s almost a caricature of itself at this point, isn’t it, Sir?’

He turned me and pushed my upper back against the wall, an arm around my lower back keeping my ass off the hard tiles, and then he kissed me. His tongue in my mouth was a delight, and I moaned against him. I could tell he was tempted to let himself be drawn back to the bedroom, except it was well after lunch and he had to get back to Grimglass before Lunedy. So we kissed until my lips felt like they were buzzing with it, until my mouth felt empty without his tongue in it.

He pulled back and thumbed at the corners of my lips and something mischievous and pleased passed between us, it felt almost as good as a spell felt when it settled in its rightful place.

‘It’s a good thing you don’t live in Esmer,’ Murtagh said gruffly.

‘Oh? You need a break, Sir?’

‘I’d never let you up for air, silly boy,’ he said, grabbing me by the shoulder and shaking me slightly.

‘Maybe I’d want that, Sir,’ I said, half-smiling at him.

He stared at me for a long time, something truly wicked crossing his dark amber eyes, and then he took a deliberate step back and shook his head. ‘You’ll be the death of me, Felix Harrowgate.’

‘Irony, thy name is Murtagh.’ I felt justified given the bruises I was wearing, and the fact that I was limping worse than usual after the night before. Even with his clever hands, I was still limping.

He laughed, good-natured, and that became the end of our day together as he declared it time to leave.

*

Within minutes of Murtagh leaving all in a rush – grasping at his travel cloak, his boots, the satchel he left by the door – the bottom floor of the lighthouse was returned to quietness. Mildmay had returned early from Our Lady of the White Waters and sat on the couch, reading. Adelais was likely still out, shopping after attending church and talking to everyone, likely buying Langonec so many treats it was a wonder he wasn’t completely round.

I made my way to the kitchen to lean against the counter. Sitting at the table would have been a nightmare. I didn’t want a hard wooden seat against my tender skin at all.

‘You’re limping worse’n usual,’ Mildmay said.

‘I’m tired,’ I said. Every other line that came to me was too crass to say, too goading, too rude. A younger version of myself might have managed it, but I didn’t want to discomfort Mildmay for the sake of it. I wanted to enjoy the rest of my afternoon.

‘I bet,’ he said.

I masked my grimace, swallowed down the catty words that rose in my throat. He was talking to me, he hadn’t said a single rude word to Murtagh, mostly because he’d not said anything to him at all.

I looked around for something to do and finally reached up for one of the jars of dried fruit. I had to let my right leg leave the ground to manage it, as I could only go onto tiptoe on the left, these days.

‘What in the sacred bleeding _fuck,’_ Mildmay breathed, and then abruptly he was off the couch and came at me so quickly I stumbled backwards. I stared, wide-eyed, as he grabbed my forearm in a rough grip that I was so unused to, I froze. He didn’t touch me. He never touched me. He let me touch him, massage his scar, but I couldn’t remember the last time he’d reached for me when he wasn’t saving my life.

His breathing was rough, and I realised he was staring at the bruises on my wrist and felt my stomach drop, even as anger fizzed to life in my gut and I set down the jar of dried cranberries before I dropped it.

‘Let me _go!’_

‘The fuck is this?’ he said, his voice breaking, as he looked from the bruises to me with wide, stricken eyes. ‘I’ll _kill_ him. I’ll…’

And then he let go of me and moved towards the door like he was going to get to Murtagh then and there. Fear struck at me. For a moment I couldn’t move, and then I ran towards him. At least, I attempted to run. My right leg wouldn’t allow it, and I gasped at the echo of pain moving through me at even trying.

 _‘Mildmay!’_ I shouted. ‘Don’t you dare!’

‘Powers and saints, you ain’t gonna stop me,’ Mildmay snarled, but he slammed the doors shut after opening them, and I suspected Murtagh was already gone. ‘Been letting you go on with him like it was a good idea, the fuck good that did either of us. Look at them bruises on your wrist, Felix!’

His accent was worse, like it had been a few years ago, and I shook my head, dismayed at the situation, at myself. I was cornered, desperately concerned for Murtagh. I had no doubt Mildmay would kill him. There was very little I could say except the truth.

‘I wanted them,’ I said, my voice weak. ‘I wanted them, Mildmay. It’s what I want from him. I’m a _martyr._ It’s none of your fucking business!’

Mildmay stared at me like I’d taken leave of my senses entirely, and then I saw pity move across his face and wished fiercely to not have to deal with any of this. I felt revolted, as much by his reaction, as the fact that I had truly wanted _all_ of it. I’d felt no shame in the bruises at all, not until he looked at me with that expression on his face.

‘Felix, you ain’t need to do shit like that to yourself anymore.’

‘I do, though,’ I said, my voice shaking. ‘ _I_ need it.’

‘You ain’t thinking that it’s good to let him torture-’

‘I’m a martyr, Mildmay!’ I shouted, shocked at myself. And I hated it too, because I never planned on admitting it to him, and there I was yelling it at him. ‘I always was!’

‘But, with Gideon…’

My heart broke all over again. It would always break, knowing what Gideon wanted from me, what I was never able to give him but what I offered freely to Murtagh whenever he wanted it. I could have murdered Mildmay for bringing it up in that tone of confusion, like he was trying to make sense of me when I couldn’t make sense of myself.

‘Yes, well, it was different with Gideon because I was still recovering from… It was _different_. All right?’

‘Your Keeper made you be a certain way, you said yourself, and I understand! Keeper made me think I was certain ways too. But it’s different here. Felix you deserve something better, sacred bleeding fuck you deserve something _better_ than-’

The rage that followed on the back of him trying to talk me out of what I’d found with Murtagh, one of the few things making Grimglass _bearable,_ left my throat hot, my eyes burning.

‘Am I not permitted to have a shred of something for myself? Just _something?’_

Mildmay pulled up like I’d slapped him, and I used that moment to step away from him, still feeling the brand of his hand on my forearm. I didn’t stop until I was out of the kitchen, until I’d put distance between us. But even so, his pity and his condescension, I couldn’t bear either of them.

‘Felix, the fuck are you talking about? What do you mean _not permitted?’_

I couldn’t answer. I didn’t want to explain what it felt like to surrender to Murtagh’s will, or the peace I found in his words when he wanted me to have it, or the way he’d treat me afterwards, like a bruised, wounded prince who deserved love and comfort. I didn’t want Mildmay to see how much I needed it, how I would have crawled over coals for it, and how I preferred sex to be seasoned with sadism. I’d given him hints over the years, even prodded to see if he’d ever be willing to be a tarquin, desperate for Mildmay to bring me low so he could see how much I loved him, how much I’d be willing to endure for him.

There was no way to explain any of that to him. At some point in this lighthouse we’d become strangers and I could have wept over it. Mildmay was right, we’d lost the closeness we’d found together in Esmer. It was gone.

‘Powers and saints,’ Mildmay said slowly. ‘You don’t mean all this time in Grimglass you’ve felt like you ain’t had nothing at all? Until…him?’

I closed my eyes. He was too perceptive for his own good. ‘No, of course not.’

‘But…’

‘Leave it alone. I very much didn’t want you to realise that I’m a martyr, but I am. Trust me, what I have with Murtagh, I consented to it, and truthfully I don’t want to know what my life would look like without it. If that makes you think less of me, I can’t stop you.’

‘I wouldn’t think less-’

The front doors burst open, and Murtagh walked in with such timing it felt like we were in one of Mehitabel’s plays.

‘Forgot my pack!’ Murtagh said brightly. ‘Left it upstairs. Thought about just leaving it and then realised I shouldn’t and that Wyatt would tear me a new one and probably insist on coming with me to Grimglass every excursion thereafter, which would be unbearable. Love the man, but just imagining him and Adelais conspiring together sets my teeth on edge. So I’m just going to be five minutes and, ah, have I interrupted something?’

Mildmay and I both stared at him. I closed my mouth when I realised it had dropped open.

‘Felix!’ Murtagh boomed. ‘Come up with me and help me find it, would you?’

It was probably on the bed where he left it, but I walked towards him anyway, shaken and resisting the urge to look back at Mildmay. I didn’t want to see the horror on his face, or the judgement, or know that he was ashamed of me. I didn’t want Murtagh to visit in the future, I didn’t want Mildmay to know that I martyred myself to Murtagh, even if they used the terms flame and shadow here.

In the elevator, I realised I was trembling. Not enough to be noticeable, but I felt the cold chill across my skin all the same. Murtagh’s gaze upon me was sharp, and I hoped he would just take his pack and leave again. I knew I could summon the energy to say farewell a second time.

When we arrived on my level, he reached out, and I stepped backwards.

‘No,’ he said, denying me even that, stepping towards me and curving his arm around my back.

I didn’t know why, but something about his certainty, his knowledge that he could touch me whenever he wanted, it caught me up in a net and held me firm. It wasn’t until that moment I realised I felt like I was falling from a great height. I looked down and met his eyes, and he looked up at me with something grim on his face.

‘Tell me what happened,’ he demanded, even though his voice was soft.

I lifted my arm and the sleeve fell down automatically. ‘He saw.’

Murtagh visibly winced, and then guided me back into my room. He made a sound of frustration when he saw his pack on the bed. He let go of my back to walk over to it, and I missed the contact.

‘He didn’t know,’ I said. ‘As in, he hasn’t known about the nature of our dynamic. The only reason he didn’t murder you as soon as you came through the door was that I talked to him about it. As much as we ever talk about anything.’

‘He’s clearly not happy. Do you want me to talk to him?’

 _‘No.’_ I couldn’t imagine anything worse. Murtagh trying to convince Mildmay that he was within his rights to be my flame? All Mildmay knew of that kind of play was what the Lower City had taught him. All he knew was that children had to be recruited to it, forced into it, tortured into accepting it, and that it was almost always – with very few exceptions – done for money that the prostitutes would never see.

‘He didn’t know you’re a shadow? He didn’t know that you were a martyr before this?’

‘He knows the same thing you know about my childhood. That I was forced into it.’

Murtagh sat down heavily against the bed, lying against it with a sound of exhaustion. It wasn’t like I could join him on the bed. Not comfortably, anyway.

‘Right. So he thinks I’m torturing you, except I’m not even paying you for the privilege. Well, no wonder he’s furious.’

‘I explained it,’ I said helplessly. I laughed, shortly. ‘Now he just thinks I’m broken.’

‘That one’s easier to deal with,’ he said, sitting up again.

‘I’m sure,’ I said bitterly.

‘I’m serious. If you think that’s not something we have to deal with in Corambis, you’re mistaken. There are plenty of people who look at what flames and shadows engage in and condemn it, or at the very least, think there’s something wrong with us. Why do you think the Copse is a secret society? Somewhat secret at any rate. There’s a reason there’s not flame and shadow houses _everywhere,_ even if there are a few. Just because something isn’t criminal, or doesn’t start from a criminal place, doesn’t mean other people don’t feel free to judge us for it.’

I considered him, and he stood up again, walking over to me, placing his hands on either side of my hips.

‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘It only takes one friend to know what I do, and ask me – in _that_ tone of voice – why I feel I need to hurt people in order to enjoy myself sexually… You don’t think that makes a person question why they like the things they do? The Copse regularly has to do damage control over it. That’s part of the training. It’s hard to accept something that people don’t understand, let alone take pride in it. So if he thinks you’re broken, you’re like nearly every other shadow who’s had to understand how to talk to other people about something that might not be common, but doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.’

‘That’s very nice of you, but the longer we spend up here, the longer he’s going to think you’re torturing me again.’

Murtagh’s head dropped like he was exhausted. ‘I hate that I’m leaving you to deal with this part alone. Give me another few minutes at least.’

‘I’d like to change the subject,’ I said. ‘Also, I’ve just realised I haven’t been calling you Sir.’

He waved his hand like it didn’t matter, then stared up at me with narrowed eyes. ‘We’ll talk about it next time, but I’m not going to punish you for it. Obviously it’s a difficult rule the day after. If you want to change the subject, you’ll have to think of something to change it to.’

I started to pace and felt the way the fabric of my trousers chafed at my bruised muscles even through my underwear, and almost changed the subject to that. But I was still too shaken. I didn’t want to think about what Murtagh had done to me, what I’d let him do, how I’d cried in his arms and he’d comforted me like the good little boy that he insisted I was.

A subject floated up to me from the depths, as soon as my mind touched upon it, I couldn’t let it go.

‘Actually, I had something I wanted to ask you. But it might be too personal.’

‘I doubt it,’ Murtagh said, smiling at me like his entire life was an open book.

‘Well,’ I said, hesitating. ‘People around the town talk, and over time I’ve heard bits and pieces. I’m led to understand you have an older brother? Clovis?’

Mildmay’s face would have turned to stone at that, but Murtagh’s face did something different. His smile stayed perfectly in place, and if anything, instead of going dead, his eyes almost gleamed. But I could see the shock of it all the same, because he held my gaze for a moment too long, until I felt like maybe he smiled at the soldiers he killed that way as well. I had to avert my eyes.

‘I suppose I do,’ he said.

Perhaps it was left-over from the sheer outrageous ownership Mildmay had shown when he’d grasped my forearm as though what I did behind closed doors was any of his business, but my irritation fired up again. Why did Murtagh get to plumb all my secrets when he came to see me, or at least dig more than anyone else ever dared to, and I couldn’t even know about his brother?

‘Is he dead?’ I said bluntly, mercilessly. I wouldn’t look away this time.

‘No,’ Murtagh said, the smile vanishing. ‘He’s not.’

‘Is he a murderer? The way people talk about him, it’s impossible to get an idea. I get the sense he’s a kept family secret. Walsh intimated he might be an aethereal? Is that why Julian has been cast to Grimglass?’

Murtagh stood abruptly and walked towards my work desk and then turned back, I could tell he’d never expected me to bring it up. It was such a relief to hook into something that had nothing to do with me, I realised I couldn’t let it go. Not now. I needed something other than the disaster of my own life to focus on.

‘He’s…’ A muscle jumped in Murtagh’s jaw. ‘Yes, he’s an aethereal, but not like Julian. Believe me, if sending Clovis to Grimglass was a solution, he’d still be living here. He was an anchorite for a time. My father didn’t know what else to do with him.’

‘An anchorite,’ I said slowly. ‘You mean those priests that get bricked into a single room prison in cemeteries to watch over the dead? You put an aethereal in a _cemetery?’_

Corambis was the only place I knew of that had anchorites, and the first time I’d learned of what they truly were, it struck me as barbaric even then. Even for those who fully consented to it. Priests were split into two groups, the intendeds who looked after their churches, and the anchorites who were bricked into tiny impoverished rooms to witness the dead forever, passed food through a tiny window, never allowed to participate in anything like life again as their nails and hair grew and their muscles wasted away. That was apparently sacred, and reminded me all over again why religion was useless.

‘If he wasn’t going to be the Duke, and couldn’t work as an intended for a church, an anchorite was all that was left to him given the nature of the Carey name,’ Murtagh said, his eyes biting in their amber brightness. ‘He didn’t last long in it, anyway. Those that attended St. Ardino found the constant screaming rather off-putting and father found somewhere else for him.’

‘Somewhere else,’ I said, staring at him.

‘Yes, somewhere else.’

‘ _Where?’_

‘A sanatorium,’ Murtagh clipped out. ‘St. Vanhalie Sanatorium.’

‘A sanatorium,’ I said, unfamiliar with the word. And then I thought about how Corambins liked to treat aethereals, it occurred to me that they might have asylums as Melusine did, just under another name. ‘An asylum? Do you mean to say he was cast aside into a place for the mentally imbalanced and those criminals that don’t get executed or imprisoned?’

Murtagh said nothing at all, but he’d gone pale, his eyes were flinty. That gleam I’d seen before had turned sharp and glasslike. Whatever had started out as irritation in me became something so huge I couldn’t see where it ended. My breathing was fast and shallow.

‘When was the last time you saw him?’ I said, feeling like I was staring at a stranger. How could he be so gentle and caring with me, and so dismissive of a family member? How could anyone cast their older brother aside and turn them into a name said rarely, and only behind closed doors? ‘Do you even check on him? Does anyone?’

‘It’s a reputable institution,’ Murtagh said fixedly, ‘and I think you know all you need to. He’s in the best place for his condition.’

‘His _condition?’_ I said, staring at him. ‘The _condition_ that isn’t mental instability at all, but an older brother being overwhelmed by hearing the voices of dead people and having no way of dealing with it in a society that tells him he’s lying? Do you mean that condition?’

‘It has nothing to do with you, Felix! And he’s not like what you know aethereals to be. You’ve _never_ seen them at their worst. The worst aethereals are mentally unstable by default, it comes with the territory. Also, you may fancy yourself to be an expert, but you have no idea – _no idea_ – what it’s like to grow up with someone scared of his own shadow, convinced that he’s going to be murdered, screaming frequently despite no provocation, trying to convince us that we’re all going to die or drown or be burned or tortured in our sleep, for years on end. Our family tried, Felix. My father _tried.’_

I was shaking again, this time with fury. ‘Do you know what they did to me, when I was cursed back in Melusine?’ My voice was higher than usual. I hated the sound of it, wished my voice would get lower and stronger when I was angry, but it never did. ‘I was cursed, I couldn’t speak of the atrocities that had happened to me, I couldn’t communicate properly, I was terrified, I hallucinated, I was – I daresay – more genuinely insane than your brother has ever been. And they put me in an asylum, why, ours are even named after saints as well. St. Crellifer’s. Do you know how they treat people in asylums, Ferrand?’

‘This isn’t Melusine!’ I’d never heard him shout like that before, but I felt no fear when he advanced towards me. My rage was bright enough to more than match his. ‘This isn’t your backwards, outdated, good-for-nothing city where children are prostitutes and the asylums are torture chambers or… _whatever_ they are, Felix. You have no idea what you’re talking about. There are a lot of things you don’t understand about my country and don’t pretend for one second that two years of living here entitles you to lecture me about something I understand very well, thank you.’

‘Have you even been there?’ I said silkily. ‘Have you ever gone? Did you lower yourself or your retinue to go and check on your brother, even once, when the Murtagh family cast him away to St. Vanhalie?’

‘I get letters from the Chief Physician-Practicioner once every three months. Clovis is doing fine.’

‘You’ve never been,’ I said, incredulous. ‘Not once, have you? Not the busy, overloaded Duke of Murtagh, who still finds time to come up to Grimglass and fuck his bit on the side.’

Murtagh opened his mouth, closed it again, and then glared at me. ‘I don’t answer to you.’

‘No!’ I said, laughing lightly. ‘It appears that you don’t answer to _anyone._ Have you forgotten what it means to be held accountable? Do you realise aethereals can be treated? Of course, no, not in _Corambis_ , where everything has to be hyper-rational and so logical that ghosts and hauntings can’t exist because the magicians have forgotten how to see them. You’re all so deeply advanced! So advanced that there was nothing more to do with your brother than abandon him – screaming in terror – in a shitty brick building, and then when that didn’t work, shove him in a cell until he rots. Forgive me, Murtagh, I had no idea your country was so sophisticated! Why, no wonder you’re so proud of your Duchy.’

‘He is past treatment,’ Murtagh gritted out.

‘Only according to your magician-practicioners, who wouldn’t know a single thing about how to treat aethereals, not even if a cure jumped up and bit them on the nose. But I’m certain he may be past treatment _now.’_

Murtagh walked over to the bed and yanked up the pack and then walked past me, looking so angry it took my breath away.

‘I do not have to stand here and listen to these insults,’ he ground out.

I watched him as he walked over to the elevator, as he activated it and left me standing there, still caught up in the wave of my own outrage.

As the elevator took him away from me, my hands clenched into loose fists. I couldn’t stop remembering the shreds and fragments I had left from my time in St. Crellifer’s. The dehumanising, hideous treatment, the lack of care or empathy or compassion, the brutal, humiliating work, the beatings.

Maybe it was time for me to see for myself just how different sanatoriums were in Corambis, compared to the asylums in Melusine. Murtagh couldn’t cure his brother; no one in this country could. But if I was capable of it, I couldn’t be so irresponsible as to leave him at the mercy of the dead who tormented him.

I’d find him and determine for myself how past treatment Clovis Carey was.


	17. Resolve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello yes and welcome back to this complete comedy of errors.
> 
> I've been spending my life lately in MRI and PET machines and also taking my cat to the vet, so it's been very refreshing actually to get back to this universe and watch these dopes make glorious fools of themselves :D

_Murtagh_

*

Isobel knew something was wrong the moment she saw me walk through the door. Whatever expression was on my face stopped her from speaking her mind, which was rare, because Isobel didn’t care about my anger and would take it on whenever she had a mind to. Which meant I didn’t look angry, I looked _upset._

I threw myself into my work over the next two weeks. There was always more than enough to be getting on with, dealing with detractors, making sure the supporters stayed supportive, looking towards the future of Esmer and Corambis and trying to make the right decisions to guide her even though she had one hand on the reins and was very much guiding herself. Immigrants from Ygres Sur brought more of their culture, cuisine and ways of life, slowly the staid browns and greys of the clothing Corambins wore was giving way to those who dared to occasionally wear some colour – though they were still mistaken for prostitutes when they did. Corambis was a curious, innovative country, she was leaning more towards trade than war these days and that was how I preferred it.

Isobel and I existed in our busy harmony in Carey House. She had a full life, she spent time with Dunne, and I was often out and about in the town, making business deals, letting people wine and dine me and watching how they tried to buy favour with the Duke of Murtagh and didn’t care a whit for the person behind the name. And every time – _every time_ – I did something even marginally enjoyable, Felix’s needling words crawled back through my head.

_‘You’ve never been. Not once, have you? Not the busy, overloaded Duke of Murtagh, who still finds time to come up to Grimglass and fuck his bit on the side.’_

The guilt was infuriating, even more than Felix’s sheer daring. I was quite certain I’d seen the side of him that had taken on Lord Stephen Teverius back in his homeland. He wasn’t afraid of me or my power. In that moment, I knew that no matter what I did to him, he’d always have that fire, he’d always have his magic. The only reason Felix didn’t own the world was because he didn’t want to.

Isobel came to me one Geovedy morning, dressed for the city, placing her purse down on my desk as she looked over my paperwork.

‘You’ve made more progress in the past two weeks on some of these matters than you have in the past five years. So, what happened in Grimglass?’

It was tempting to tell her that nothing happened, to go through the dance of it, but we had been married a long time and I wouldn’t let a ‘nothing’ pass from Isobel and she wouldn’t let one pass from me. We knew how to talk to each other, we knew when we were being fed bullshit. Neither of us had much patience for it.

‘He’s found out about Clovis,’ I said flatly. ‘He had some things to say about it.’

‘How is it any of his business?’ Isobel said sharply. ‘That has nothing to do with him.’

‘Felix thinks he can treat him.’

Isobel opened her mouth, drew in a sharp hiss of air, then closed it again. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at me.

 _‘Can_ he?’

I hoped not. It was a terrible thing to say, but Holy Lady I hoped he’d just forget about it and realise how futile it was. But as those two weeks crept by, I thought about Julian and how Felix had effortlessly helped him. I had no doubt there was more he could do if Julian became sicker.

But no one had ever been as sick as Clovis and stayed out of a Sanatorium. My father put it off for as long as possible. It was hard on all of us. Clovis had been my wonderful, older brother who was mischievous, charming and kind. He always shared more than he needed to, involved us all in his games and sometimes stared a bit too intently at shadows in the woods, or looked up to the attic like he could hear something we couldn’t.

For a while, Clovis was the golden child of our family and I didn’t even think to mind because Clovis was so good about it. I had no doubt that when he became the Duke, he’d look out for me, and that left me free to consider a life for myself, to dream of big adventures, to not worry so much about training in etiquette or politics or navigating a nation.

One day it changed. Increasing hints that Clovis was becoming unstable, but one day after we visited Grimglass, it was as though a switch had been turned off or on and he was no longer my brother.

He got worse. And worse. And worse. Physician-practicioners and magician-practicioners despaired no matter how exemplary they were. One recommended that Clovis become an anchorite, that the Holy Lady would lead him home.

He got worse.

The words ‘treatment’ and ‘Clovis’ put to mind barbaric, old-fashioned treatments father put him through when the newer, better ones failed. It made me think of his fear and his terror in the face of being bled again and again to draw out the imbalance in his mind.

 _‘They’re taking my blood! They’re taking my blood again! Mama!_ Mama! _’_

He would scream until his voice gave out and then he would scream until his throat bled and infected, and then he would scream himself into catatonia.

Clovis and Julian were night and day, in terms of what it was to be an aethereal.

‘Ferrand?’ Isobel prompted gently.

‘I don’t know,’ I said roughly. ‘No, probably not. But we fought. He was rude.’

I wasn’t much better, but I didn’t need to tell her that. I could tell by the expression on her face that she understood. And another wonderful weekend in Grimglass, blissful even, had been ruined by the morning after.

I tried to tell myself that I didn’t want him, I didn’t need him, it would be better if I declared our tryst over and done with. I told myself I was done even as I planned what I wanted to do to him in a week or two. I told myself it was over even as I imagined the heat of his skin under my palm, or that breathless voice of his, that surprised laugh, like he never expected the world to be delightful and was pleased when it was.

‘Was he rude because he was sure he could help?’ Isobel said.

‘Not exactly. I think it was because he’s spent time in a facility that he thinks is like the ones we have here, that we have Clovis in; he was angry on behalf of Clovis.’

‘Maybe if he met Clovis he’d understand. But, Ferrand, even I haven’t met him. No one has.’

The headache at the back of my skull throbbed. Felix was right, I’d never gone to visit Clovis at St. Vanhalie. Not once. I left it to my father, and he didn’t pressure me into going, and then when I was old enough to arrange trips myself, I refused to go. Every three months when I received my letter from the Sanatorium, I hoped that I’d get news that he’d died in his sleep or from the sedating drugs they gave him. The real Clovis had vanished decades ago, and the shell left behind only suffered and wasn’t even aware enough to know why. He was a dog beaten by its owner, except the owner was his own mind and he couldn’t escape it.

I couldn’t stomach his misery, knowing how utterly powerless I was before it, and how utterly useless it was for any of us to be there. He stopped recognising us long before he even became an anchorite.

‘At any rate,’ Isobel said, her voice firming back to its usual tone. ‘It’s none of his business. You might have many flaws, darling, but you’re still a good man. I haven’t seen you this upset for some time. Is it over then?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘Oh dear, you hate not knowing things.’

‘I really do,’ I said, laughing weakly. ‘You know me too well.’

‘Poor Ferrand, I’m sure you didn’t want another partner to argue with you, and yet you went and sought him out. It’s not too early to call it off, you know, find someone to gaze up at you all awestruck and never question a single thing you say.’

I stared at her, and her smile when it came was gentle but still knowing. I had no shortage of sycophants and I wanted to bed none of them. ‘Do you argue with Dunne?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ Isobel said. ‘I’ve even tried arguing with inanimate objects once or twice. Nothing escapes my wrath, as well you know.’

‘How does he deal with it?’

‘In a singularly annoying fashion. He listens, he tells me that I’m beautiful when I’m angry, and then by and large he tends to agree with me.’

‘How awful for you,’ I said, glad to be distracted from my own woes, liking the way Isobel’s eyes had softened. No, we weren’t ever going to be deeply in love, but we did care for each other, we’d learned how to want the best for each other.

‘I have to leave,’ Isobel said with a sigh, picking up her purse, ‘but if you need to talk on it further, you can come to me. Family is difficult, and you and I know that better than most.’

I nodded, and she left.

The truth was, Felix knew it better than most too. I knew that was why he’d arced up so quickly. I’d read in the report about the things he’d done against his brother, for his brother, to save his brother, and knew that he saw Mildmay as a tarquin and struggled with it, and knew that his life was wrapped up with his brother in ways I would never fully fathom.

And there I was with my own brother, never seeing him, never interacting with him, and – according to Felix – leaving him to rot in a prison cell.

The headache swelled and throbbed, I felt sick. Truthfully, I felt far younger than my years in a way I couldn’t stomach. I turned and looked at the cabinet where the letters from St. Vanhalie were kept, and closed my eyes.

‘Damn him,’ I muttered under my breath.

I’d just wanted someone to torment and to fuck. At the least, I wanted his words not to affect me. He didn’t know me, he’d never met the majority of my family, he didn’t know Corambis, he only met his first aethereal around two years ago!

All of his sentences rattled and clanged in my head and after a while I rang the bell for Wyatt and asked for an analgesic. His eyebrows rose, but he went unquestioningly to fetch some.

They didn’t help as much as I hoped they would

*

Venerdy afternoon, and Wyatt came to see me, holding an opened envelope stiffly in his hands and looking unhappy. Wyatt rarely looked displeased, and every time he did, something terrible had usually happened.

‘What is it?’ I said.

‘Your Grace,’ Wyatt said, bowing slightly in greeting. ‘It’s about Virtuer Felix Harrowgate.’

A long, pregnant pause, and I was already irritated. ‘If you have to tell me something, you’d best tell me. I’m not about to guess, Wyatt.’

‘You received an urgent letter from St. Vanhalie, from Chief Physician-Practicioner Bulleven. The Virtuer Felix Harrowgate wrote to inform him that he would be travelling to the Sanatorium to inspect its magical barriers. Bulleven claims that Virtuer Harrowgate said he had your permission to do so, which raised some alarm bells, given you’ve never visited and we don’t use magical barriers in our Sanatoriums in the first place.’

I stood, fury coursing through my veins. ‘Felix said _what?’_

And then the rest of it clambered through me. Felix travelling to Rinnaline and visiting a place I’d never been, no doubt to attempt what I was sure wouldn’t work. It would put Clovis in danger. Felix was putting _himself_ in danger.

‘You did not give him this permission, Your Grace?’ Wyatt said, but I could tell he already knew the answer.

‘I don’t want him going anywhere near St. Vanhalie. What can you do about it?’

‘It is nothing to send a small but urgent missive to the carriage hire in Grimglass, Your Grace. There’s only the one, and if he hasn’t hired one yet, they can block him. If he’s hired one… it is no large thing to sabotage one of the wheels. He cannot make it to Rinnaline on horseback alone.’

We knew that, but did Felix?

I took the letter from Wyatt, looking through it. The words were cursory but to the point, Chief Physician-Practicioner Bulleven was doubtful that the controversial, exiled magician had anything like my blessing to go to St. Vanhalie, after all, I’d never met Bulleven and if I wanted to inspect the ‘magical barriers’ at the Sanatorium I could have had it done at any point in the past three and a half decades. Not only that, but even the term ‘magical barriers’ wasn’t Corambin magician-speak. Felix likely wouldn’t have realised, he’d played his hand too obviously.

‘I have to go to Grimglass,’ I muttered. ‘Damn it. I don’t have the _time.’_

I certainly didn’t want to find the time to be doing damage control, and I was so angry with Felix for lying so boldly and freely I couldn’t think straight. He knew that he’d likely be blocked from seeing my brother if he asked directly, so he found a way around it and tried to pretend that he had my blessing. It was the kind of offence that could see him imprisoned. Surely he knew that. Surely this situation with Clovis didn’t matter that much to him.

I was never going to be rid of this blasted headache.

‘We can tie up the meeting with the Vetivers today, Your Grace, they will appreciate the urgency. Beyond that, your calendar is unforgiving until Lunedy morning, but those three days are plenty of time for me to keep Felix at Grimglass.’

‘Do it,’ I said. ‘Lame the bloody horses if you have to.’ I paused, thinking of Adelais’ horse, Langonec. My anger was making me stupid. ‘Ah, perhaps don’t go that far.’

‘There are sedatives for horses as well,’ Wyatt said blandly. ‘I’ll see what I can do, Your Grace.’

He bowed and walked out. My headache returned with heavy inevitability and I stood there, massaging my temples and thinking I was too old for this, and if I’d just kept up with seeing the odd shadow here and there and paying for the privilege, I wouldn’t have ended up in this mess in the first place.

*

My anger calmed over the next few days to something of a plan. I’d go to Grimglass, I’d talk Felix out of it, if necessary I’d dig around to see where this touched on his issues with Mildmay and remind him that he should fix the problems in his own back garden before he focused on anyone else’s. And so Wyatt and I travelled up to Grimglass together in the fiacre built to handle the worst of the roads, and he stared quietly out of the window – having pulled the small curtains back – and watched as Esmer became wilder, rugged, and turned into rolling meadows and rocky granite outcrops.

I tried not to think of anything at all and failed. I’d conditioned myself on these roads to think about Felix’s body in my hands, my arms, under my mouth, my body, my teeth. Even now, even when I was angry and frustrated and determined to put a stop to whatever Felix thought he was about to start, I thought of the noises he made when he was so overwrought with pleasure he couldn’t restrain himself any longer. I thought about how his skin dipped beneath my touch, how his back arched in pure supplication. I thought about how touched I was by his trust, how someone who’d led the life he’d led, would still give himself up to me in a way that was stunningly beautiful.

I was angry at myself, this was a level of attachment that went beyond the physical, even though it came to me in images that pretended that I only cared about the physical.

I should have ended it.

I should have ended it and walked away.

I turned to look at Wyatt, and he looked at me after a moment, alert and attentive. I had tried to talk him out of coming with me, but he’d patiently refused, saying that he owed a debt to the carriage hire for forcing them to refuse payment from Virtuer Harrowgate. I explained I could discharge the debt myself, and Wyatt had stared at me steadily until I’d backed down.

‘What do you think of all of this?’ I said.

‘Your Grace, you pay me very well not to have opinions,’ Wyatt said with a smile. I rolled my eyes and he cleared his throat, leaning against the side of the fiacre and staring out the window again. ‘I think you wouldn’t be going to this effort if you didn’t think he was worthy of it. People have been jailed for far less. Using a Duke’s name to infiltrate institutions is not exactly above board.’

‘Not exactly.’

‘But from what I know of Virtuer Harrowgate, it doesn’t seem like a surprise. And you did know him before you began visiting him in Grimglass, Your Grace.’

‘So I should have seen this coming?’ I said.

‘Not quite, Your Grace. I only think you appreciate that he has by all accounts and purposes a spirited personality.’

‘What did you like about him, the first time you procured him for me?’

Wyatt was the one who met him first, after all. The one who took my notes on what I wanted and delivered me someone who looked different to what I’d asked for, and yet was more than I’d dreamed of all at once. I remembered the shock of seeing Felix in the Althammara hotel, a tall, striking beauty who wore his pride first and his fear second, both on his sleeves.

 _‘Then I was expecting you. But I wasn’t expecting_ you.’

I had no idea who he was, only that he wasn’t Corambin, Usaran, Ygressine, only that he’d appeared like some Cymellunid angel, obedient and terrified and shaking and somehow mine to destroy and put back together for the evening. And I had done just that, though gently, once I’d realised that I was dealing with a damaged shadow. But I’d made him work for every bit of coin I paid him, and I treated him like a shadow who had plenty of experience and was just out of practice. He’d pretended at long experience and simply being out of practice, when the only experience he had was what was thrust upon him as a child and whatever monstrosities he’d experienced at the hands of Malkar Gennadion.

I felt uneasy and suddenly very, very tired. And over something I’d already apologised for. Something I’d sought him out over and apologised for. He’d smiled at me in that garden of roses and assured me he’d wanted all of it and I _knew_ he had – my instincts weren’t that off – but still. _Still…_

‘There were rumours,’ Wyatt said quietly, staring out of the window, ‘of an immigrant bluet from Melusine being pimped by a young, honest woman who worked at the Brocade Mouse. The bluet had a good reputation, an interesting history and looked unlike anyone in Bernatha, so I enquired discreetly, saw him from a distance myself and knew then that he’d be someone you’d appreciate mastering. At the time he wasn’t working as a shadow, so I left it, but then-’

‘He wasn’t working as a shadow?’ I said, shocked. Felix had told me he was out of practice, but I didn’t realise that he was completely fresh to it when he came to me, that I was the first he’d been a shadow for since…who? Malkar? Someone else?

‘That’s correct, Your Grace. He was taking clients, but not in his capacity as a shadow. I believe you were the first. The young woman jumped at the chance, I’m led to believe that he rather needed the money. I was hesitant, of course, but Gartrett Corbie insisted that he was – in the vernacular – a sure thing. I know your appreciation for slightly unusual cases and I took a calculated risk.’

I stared ahead, trying to puzzle out my thoughts. I thought Felix had been working as a shadow in Bernatha for at least a few weeks before he’d come to see me. And I thought he’d been working as a shadow for long after. But it wasn’t soon after I saw him that the Clock of Eclipses debacle had happened, and as far as I knew, he stopped selling his body after that. So it was likely that he’d only had two or three experiences as a shadow in Bernatha, and then nothing at all until I’d started seeing him in Grimglass.

‘I never met him properly,’ Wyatt said. ‘Not until he turned up early at the Althammara to present himself to you.’

I didn’t respond. I had nothing left to say and I wasn’t obligated to finish conversations with Wyatt. He’d understand.

As the landscape changed again, turning truly rugged, I turned to him. ‘You’re not to come into the lighthouse until I’ve talked with Felix.’

‘Of course, Your Grace,’ Wyatt said calmly. He didn’t look away from the view. I wondered if he was just happy to get a better idea of the lover I’d taken up with, the man he’d never met properly and who I was still getting to know.

*

It was Walsh who let me into the lighthouse, and it was Mildmay who stood there in the kitchen, staring blue murder at me. At once I remembered the mess that had preceded my argument with Felix and took a bracing breath. I wasn’t afraid of Mildmay. He was like so many other people who didn’t understand what it was to be a flame or a shadow. A protective brother I could work with, even though I wasn’t in the mood.

‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘I apologise for coming unannounced, is Felix in?’

‘Gonna give him some more bruises?’

At least he didn’t dance around the issue, which was refreshing.

‘If he wants them,’ I said easily. ‘But I doubt he will. He and I have something serious to discuss. Felix led me to believe that he’d told you he was a shadow – a martyr, in the vernacular you know – so why are you treating me like this? What, exactly, do you wish to say to me?’

Mildmay blinked at me in a way that suggested he didn’t expect to be confronting this head on at all, let alone on a Lunedy afternoon when none of them knew to expect me.

‘He deserves more’n your abuse,’ Mildmay said stiffly.

‘Felix deserves a very great deal,’ I said, leaning against the kitchen counter in a way that didn’t quite block Mildmay from exiting, but let him know I wasn’t ready for him to storm away, in case he was prone to running from hard conversations like Felix was. ‘For example, have you ever noticed how responsive he is to praise? It’s rare to meet someone who responds to it as boldly and sweetly as he does, but there’s an element to it that suggests he’s not nearly had enough of it, and certainly not from the people who matter most to him.’

I stared at Mildmay levelly, and could tell the moment Mildmay realised what I meant.

‘Haven’t you ever noticed how he flourishes when you tell him that he’s done well at something?’ I said. ‘Or have you never noticed, because you never tell him?’

‘The fuck is it any of your business?’ Mildmay scraped out.

‘It’s not, of course, and perhaps I’m wrong, it’s been known to happen. I’m sure you’re very free in your praise of him, perhaps you are very kind to each other when other people aren’t around. All I’ve seen is the insults and the awkwardness. He loves you more than life itself, Mildmay, so much so, that he did not want you to know about his true nature, that he would rather protect you from it and protect himself in the process.’

‘Felix don’t need protection from me.’

‘I’m quite certain that Felix is powerful enough to seem like he doesn’t need protection from anyone,’ I said. ‘But if that were true, you wouldn’t be here trying to protect him from _me._ So I’d like you to understand my position, Mildmay, as someone who has observed the two of you never communicating to each other except in bitterness, the civility one observes between strangers or in stops and starts. The sooner you get over your desire to judge him for who he is, the sooner he might actually open up to you. And then you can have a proper discussion about it and you’ll realise I’m on his side, and therefore, I’m on yours.’

I stood and walked away from the kitchen to the banged up dining table.

‘I recommend personally starting with praise,’ I said, turning to look at him over my shoulder. ‘Because as far as I can tell, Felix seems to expect the worst and is desperate to keep you happy by any means necessary, and he _will_ sabotage himself to make sure you’re doing well at Grimglass. I think you know that, judging by the way your expression changed. And I’m sorry for it, because I know how stubborn he is. But shadows need nurturing, they need care, and they need to be told they’ve done well. Not just in the bedroom, either.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Mildmay said. I was surprised at how even his voice was, because I could tell he was angry with me. ‘Most of his life, people have worshipped him. Fuck all it’s done for him. People don’t understand who he is, what he needs. Ain’t like he believes most of it anyway, unless it’s about magic or his looks.’

I considered him for a long time. ‘If you understood what he needs, truly, perhaps he would have felt more comfortable opening up to you. Don’t misunderstand me, I’ll say it again – I know that he doesn’t like to open up to _anyone,_ even those he trusts – but I don’t think telling me not to bruise him when he wanted those bruises is the answer. I know very well the difference between raping someone and not raping them, and I know very well the sorts of things Felix has experienced in the past, and I have no interest in being another monster in his life. I happen to like and respect your brother very much, but look at it from my perspective. Here, in Grimglass, the villagers adore you, you have employment if you want it, I understand you have plenty of companionship, and your brother is here exactly where you can keep an eye on him, and he _never leaves.’_

‘He’s out of trouble, fuck if I want him back out in the world where he messes shit up or shit messes him up. He’s working, he gets paid, he’s…’

Mildmay looked away abruptly. His expression clouded, his eyebrows pulled together.

‘He’s lonely,’ I said quietly.

‘That’s just _Fe-’_ He cut off his brother’s name before he could complete it.

I wondered why I still cared so much, when I was angry with Felix, when Felix had lied through his teeth and used my name to try and breach an institution he had no right breaching. I wondered why I was here arguing my case with Mildmay, when I fully expected to be lecturing Felix, hoping that he’d feel guilty enough to just _stop._

‘A person who truly feels worshipped, does not feel that lonely,’ I said finally. ‘Anyway, my original point is that Felix is who he is, he likes what he likes. I’m sure his past shaped his tastes, but he’s made them his own and he’s found something in the journey of it that matters to him. What you know of martyrs and tarquins is very different to the flame and shadow system we have here. I’m sure you don’t want to think very much about it, but if you ever want to know more you need only ask, or send away for some literature, we have books on the philosophy of it. But if you want a very simple answer: If he wants me to bruise him, I’ll bruise him. And then I’ll take care of him afterwards, and I’ll make sure he’s sound.’

‘He ain’t here, anyway,’ Mildmay muttered. ‘Been on a right tear lately. Don’t know when he’ll be back.’

‘Let me guess, he’s trying to hire a carriage?’ I said.

Mildmay’s eyes betrayed his surprise, and I grit my teeth together. The little wretch. Obviously Wyatt had stalled him, but he hadn’t stopped him.

‘I’m going to fetch my assistant,’ I said finally. ‘Is there anything else you want to say to me, before I get him?’

‘If you hurt him, _really_ hurt him, I’ll fucking kill you.’

Mildmay stared at me with something dead and certain in his eyes and I had no doubt that he would. That wasn’t bluster or bravado. It was the sure words of someone who had killed before and would do it again in the right circumstances.

‘Good,’ I said.

I had the singular satisfaction of seeing Mildmay’s eyes widen in shock, before turning and walking out of the lighthouse, taking several deep breaths as I closed the doors and went over to the fiacre where Wyatt looked to be dozing. I knocked gently on the grass and he came awake like he hadn’t been sleeping at all. A simple tip of my head and he came out of the fiacre and secured the horses, and followed me into the lighthouse.

He bowed slightly towards Mildmay, and then at a gesture from me, sat down at the kitchen table. He looked around curiously, but didn’t say anything.

I sat down and resigned myself to Felix returning. Mildmay looked over the both of us, something faintly exasperated on his face, but I knew he was thinking about what I said. He could have gone in a lot of different directions, but I knew when a man was turning something over and teasing away at it. At least he’d seemed to accept that Felix wanted what he wanted, even if he still thought it was morally wrong.

About an hour passed when the large, wooden double doors to the front of the lighthouse banged open, a gale blowing in and bringing bits of grass and sand with it. And there, Felix stormed into the house with his hair in a neat plait and wearing a shabby coat like it was the garb of royalty, limping as he always did.

I realised I’d forgotten to ask around for physician-practicioners who could see him in Grimglass, in my anger.

‘There has to be a way to get a single damned carriage in Grimglass, I refuse to believe that-’ He saw me and stopped at once, then placed his hands on his hips. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised. I suppose you had something to do with this?’

‘I have a copy of your letter to Bulleven in my office,’ I said.

Felix didn’t look like a man caught out, he didn’t look afraid, he looked singularly focused with fury.

‘Keep up the sabotage, Ferrand,’ he spat out. ‘I’m going.’

‘Listen, we need to have a conversation,’ I said, even as Adelais swept past Felix into her kitchen, and put the kettle on with a sigh.

‘If the conversation is any version of trying to get me not to go, then you might as well take yourself and Wyatt back to Esmer and leave me to it, darling,’ he said, and then smiled a glittering, brittle thing at me that only made his anger more pointed. ‘Suddenly villagers _mysteriously_ can’t hire out their unused carriages. The carriage hire’s fiacre loses a wheel. Something that Mildmay can fix, by the way, and he will as soon as you’re gone.’

‘Yep,’ Mildmay said, with the air of someone who had no idea what Felix was talking about, but definitely wanted to be on his side instead of mine. ‘Wait, where’re you going?’

Felix looked at Mildmay and then raised his hands like he wanted to drag them through his hair.

‘You cannot continue to block me at every turn,’ Felix said to me with such assurance that I had no idea what to say. ‘Lord Stephen couldn’t. _No one can._ So I will leave to meet Clovis either with your blessing, or without it, but I will do it regardless of how clever you think you are.’

‘And you, Felix?’ I said mildly. ‘Pretending that you have my permission to shore up the ‘magical barriers’ at St. Vanhalie? Did you know that claiming the approval of a Duke when you don’t have it to gain egress into a state institution, is a form of state fraud that is punishable by imprisonment?’

Felix stared at me like he didn’t care. I supposed he didn’t. I tried not to feel cornered, tried to hook into that easygoing I-can-solve-anything mien that had gotten me through my entire rein as Duke. But my heart was beating hard. I thought of Clovis miserable and screaming and not recognising any of us. I thought of Felix encountering that side of my family. Memories rose up like rotted things, like dead bodies dredged from the bottom of a lake. The best way to deal with thoughts of Clovis was to not think about Clovis.

‘Are you here to imprison me?’ he said sweetly.

‘What about the lighthouse?’ I said. ‘You are here as its Virtuer, don’t tell me-’

‘ _Don’t,’_ Felix snapped. ‘You haven’t had a Virtuer here for _years,_ don’t pretend for a second that I’m somehow performing a vital service when I’m here in exile. I know exactly what Grimglass needs of me, and it’s nothing at all. If I have turned any of it to good use, that has nothing to do with the Corambins. There hasn’t been a Virtuer here for decades, don’t insult me by pretending that’s your primary concern.’

Adelais watched Felix, I could tell she supported him, which suggested that she knew what he was doing and why he was trying to do it. Mildmay clearly had no idea that Felix intended on going anywhere, probably because he wouldn’t want him to leave. And Wyatt sat quietly by my side and offered up that impartial silence that would turn immediately to my favour if I demanded it of him.

I felt cornered.

‘You can’t-’

‘Your Grace,’ Felix said coldly, ‘you can either come with me and ‘supervise’ or you can leave me to see for myself if he is truly mad or spirit-afflicted. But you cannot stop me.’

I thought of how he’d stopped the Automaton of Corybant. How no other magician-practicioner in centuries had been able to stop it – some couldn’t even credit it existed – and Felix had used a burst of magical power to stop it and then waved off the compliments and the praise and the awe like he’d done nothing impressive at all. I thought of what he’d done to save Kay from himself by destroying the Summerdown automaton, which would have destroyed Kay, and then all of Caloxa and beyond, its monstrous mechanical form thriving on blood sacrifice.

‘I’d still like to talk to you in private,’ I said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Those are my terms. You may come with me, or you can leave.’

‘Felix,’ Mildmay interrupted. ‘Where’re you going?’

‘A Sanatorium in Rinnaline, it’s not accessible by train.’

‘A Sanatorium,’ Mildmay said.

‘An asylum. You remember, don’t you? Murtagh is keeping his older brother – who is just an aethereal, and likely not mad – there.’

‘I’m not _keeping_ anyone there, it’s for his own protection,’ Murtagh bit out.

‘I’m coming too,’ Mildmay said with more brightness in his voice than I’d heard since I’d arrived.

‘No you’re not.’ Felix and I spoke at exactly the same time. And I could tell from Mildmay’s gleaming expression that it was the wrong thing to say.

‘We’ll need that brougham after all,’ Wyatt said to himself. ‘It will seat four people and a fiacre won’t. Do you want me to go organise it?’

‘You’re not coming with me,’ Felix said to Mildmay, and I did nothing to dispel my dark amusement that he had his own stubborn ass to deal with.

‘Felix, you ain’t going to a fucking Sanatorium on your own. You ain’t even wanted to leave Grimglass for two years. And powers and saints, I can help. So I’m coming. Don’t fucking tell me Grimglass needs an engineer, if they ain’t needed a Virtuer, they ain’t needed me either.’

‘Perhaps in a few months,’ I said, ‘we can arrange-’

 _‘No,’_ Felix said. ‘I am doing this now.’

‘He’s been there for years, for the Holy Lady’s sake. He can go another few months!’

‘No. Years is too long. Another few months is too long. He’s been there _too long_ without someone checking if they could truly help him.’

‘He’s seen _every damned physician in-_ ’

‘He’s never seen me,’ Felix said stubbornly. ‘And having been an aethereal myself, I am likely the only person in Corambis who can tell you if he’s genuinely beyond help or not.’

I was standing, and I couldn’t remember having stood. I took a step towards him and then made myself stop. ‘Felix, please.’

His blue and yellow eyes widened, something on his face shifted, twisted with a pain that finally let me know he didn’t find this easy. It only made his determination more threatening. I couldn’t make an emotional appeal, he wasn’t going to listen. My heart knocked and knocked away in my chest, the headache I’d been dealing with on and off for weeks returned with a vengeance.

‘Felix…’ I said. ‘Please can we talk about this?’

‘I’m sorry, Ferrand, I’ve made up my mind. Believe me when I say I know what this risks. I do. But the idea of an aethereal being locked up for life for something that might have nothing to do with his mind… I can’t let that go. I simply can’t. Even if he is beyond help, I know what those places can be like, and you don’t. Maybe it’s paradise, I will be glad to admit that you were right and I was wrong, I will be glad of it, Ferrand, but I need to know.’

_Believe me when I say I know what this risks._

We could have been the only two people in that lighthouse, in that moment. He stared at me with the naked appeal of a shadow begging his flame to understand, and I was the one drowning.

I turned to Wyatt and felt every inch of my years. ‘Can we afford the time?’

‘You’re the Duke of Murtagh,’ Wyatt said calmly. ‘It is your prerogative to do as you will with your time, Esmer will manage. It’s not as though you do this often, Your Grace. Shall I go see about getting that brougham repaired?’

I looked at Felix again, his eyes darting between us, like he couldn’t believe this was happening, or that I was about to come with him on the most ill-considered adventure of my life. Which was saying something, really.

‘Yes,’ I said heavily. ‘You’d better.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> road trip roAD TRiP ROAD TRIP ROAD TRIP!!!!


	18. Small

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just 400% pure tropey Mildmay and Felix indulgence and I’m not even a little ashamed.

_Felix_

*

The brougham was designed for Corambins, which meant my head constantly brushed the top of the carriage and my knees were up somewhere by my ribs, always brushing against Wyatt’s legs. I sat next to Murtagh, and Mildmay sat next to Wyatt, and it was stony silence accompanied by the occasional commands of the carriage-driver and the sounds of his horses. My calf threatened to cramp, to the point where that feeling of waiting for an impending seize became a dull background ache that had me wanting to massage it out.

But every time I dropped my hand to my leg, Mildmay and Murtagh’s eyes followed the movement and I decided I’d rather just not touch the leg at all.

I hadn’t expected Murtagh to come with me. No, I’d expected an attempt at imprisonment. At best, I thought Murtagh might try and wrestle me into a fiacre – and there was one waiting at the lighthouse when Adelais and I got back from the village – and forcibly take me back to Esmer. Perhaps where the Circle had agreed not to imprison me after all two years ago, Murtagh would be able to see some sort of justice done.

I’d been prepared to fight him. I had already planned to surrender myself after seeing Clovis, and that would be that. At least I’d know for myself if Clovis was beyond help.

But no, instead we were packed like sardines in a tin, Mildmay’s height working against him, both of us like giants in a toy carriage.

My hand dropped towards my calf again, I was trying to get my fingers in underneath my knee, but couldn’t. My calf was pressed too hard against my thigh, there was no room to shift. I didn’t want to be caught with it cramping in here. I had a vision of myself yanking the door open and falling out onto the ground and rolling several metres as the brougham continued on without me. I especially didn’t want Murtagh and Mildmay both agreeing that it would be better if I just stayed at the lighthouse.

My other hand clutched the Sibylline tightly. I read the cards on the matter after deciding to see Clovis, and I’d been reading on the matter ever since, always getting the same cards no matter how I shuffled them. The Nine of Swords, the Sibyl of Swords, the Heart of Light, the Rock. I knew the Sibyl of Swords was myself, which bolstered my decision to see Clovis in the first place. The Nine of Swords was probably Clovis and the Carey family, representing despair and madness and martyrdom. But I couldn’t perceive the Heart of Light, or the Rock.

I knew Murtagh was upset, I knew this went beyond his general stubbornness or pigheadedness, into something deep and distressing. It was to him what Malkar was to me, a foundational shattering, and I could see that he’d shaped his entire existence around it in a way I’m not sure he could see himself. From his habit of rarely talking about himself on any meaningful personal level, to his avoidance of difficult subjects, to his nervousness around the lighthouse and the fact that it used to be haunted.

I could see the compassion in him too, for all that I didn’t want to. He’d sent Julian to Grimglass and let me see to him. He genuinely tried to do the best thing he knew how to do by Corambin standards. No one in Corambis thought well of Aethereals until they’d had their beliefs shaken at their core. The bias was baked into the society. That Murtagh still clearly cared for Julian was in itself a sign that he hadn’t abandoned all his softness over the subject.

I knew also that were I in Murtagh’s position, I would have abandoned softness as soon as I could, or at least pretended to. I was sure Murtagh potentially faced political challenges just for allowing Julian to live a free and relatively unfettered life. And Julian wasn’t happy about his circumstances, and Murtagh wasn’t happy about them either, but I’d recognised in my research into Sanatoriums and the culture around Aethereals, Murtagh was someone who tried. It wasn’t lip service, no one who knew Julian was an Aethereal thought Julian should be free to live in greater society.

I wanted to talk to Murtagh, but I didn’t want to be forced out of my decision. I wasn’t sure if he could talk to me about it in any other way.

Squashed so close to him in the brougham, I was excruciatingly aware the warmth of his body against mine, always warmer. The fact that though he was smaller, there was nothing about his presence that could ever be small. Even here it felt that he somehow took up the entire space and Corambis had to expand to make room just to contain his mind, his will.

Wyatt had the curtains drawn back from the small window, watching the world go by. I paid little attention. Most of the villages we passed were tiny. This wasn’t the way we’d come to Grimglass, we were travelling inland, away from the ocean. Slowly the lighthouse let go of me and I saw instead woodlands and forests and little pretty farmhouses with fat, stocky horses in duns and reds and browns designed for the Corambin winters. Beyond that, I was tired of travelling long distances to perform impossible tasks for uncertain results. My entire life seemed to involve these sorts of adventures and I wondered if I’d prefer going to Esmer to purchase new clothing for once, instead of…whatever this was about to become.

‘We cannot travel nonstop,’ Murtagh said. ‘Not with your leg, nor with Mildmay’s.’

I’d been so absorbed in my own ennui that I hadn’t considered how Mildmay’s thigh would be holding up to the travel. I looked over to him, but his face was blank. He’d tried to catch my gaze a few times in the beginning, but when we were all piled in the newly repaired brougham and realised just how close we’d be to each other, his expression had shuttered.

It was tempting to needle, to make sure Murtagh wasn’t stopping just to slow us down, but he seemed like the kind of man who committed to his decisions as much as I committed to mine. And he was right. Mildmay needed the rest and I was afraid of straightening my leg in case it seized. I hoped to leave the brougham last to hide the worst of it.

‘How long will it take?’ I said.

‘A good two days with stops,’ Wyatt said. ‘Or a single day if one goes hard on the horses and doesn’t care about arriving past midnight. We can stop in Millefol, The Gold Rabbit is a reputable inn and the horses will be well seen to.’

‘That looks to be less than an hour away,’ Murtagh said, barely glancing out of the window.

I’d never known a landscape as well as Murtagh knew Corambis. I wondered if he had some sort of inner compass the way Mildmay did, letting him know where to go. The only thing I could compare it to was Mildmay’s knowledge of the Lower City, his ability to track labyrinths even in the dark with no stars or sun above him, or possibly even my knowledge of the Mirador, but even the Mirador wanted you to get lost at times. The technique of finding anything obscure in the Mirador was largely to let it guide you while losing your way and holding your magical intent and hoping for the best.

‘That’s acceptable,’ Murtagh said. ‘Presumably you’re thinking to stop at Wolford tomorrow?’

‘Wolford would see us into Rinnaline the following morning,’ Wyatt said, as though he’d already arranged the entire trip and multiple versions of it in his mind. Knowing him, he probably had. ‘Depending on how long we take, we could be back to Wolford that evening and follow the same path back.’

‘Very well,’ Murtagh said, pushing back into his seat and looking away from me.

Yes, well, it seemed I was rather at odds with everyone in this brougham except for Wyatt, who had a wonderful ability to look politely disengaged at all times, until Murtagh needed him. I had a feeling it was impossible to be at odds with Wyatt, and that it happened only when he wanted it to.

An hour and a half later – after getting stalled on a bridge behind some lowing cattle that had decided the grass on either side of the road looked delicious while the cowherd’s fat corgis tries to move them with very little success – we made it to Millefol, the most populated town I’d been to in two years. I stared out of the window at the two and three storey buildings all built from the same pale grey stone that sparkled as the sun’s rays hit it. Millefol looked like the kind of city that would be unfairly grim in the rain, but it was charming in the light.

It also made me realise, once again, that Corambis was perhaps the most populated place I’d ever visited. Outside of Melusine, Marathat became villages far more often than it became populated townships. But here, at a place no other Marathine had likely ever heard of, Millefol prospered as some merchant hub for farmers and mountainfolk.

‘The Gold Rabbit is just there,’ Murtagh said, getting my attention so that I’d look out of the opposite window. ‘It’s where we’ll be staying.’

‘They’re almost never at full occupancy unless there’s a festival, they’ll make room for the Duke,’ Wyatt said, opening the door and stepping out.

‘I’m comin’,’ Mildmay said, opening the door on the opposite side and swearing under his breath as he got out. His thigh must be giving him some grief, he generally stayed as silent as possible about the pain he was in. He closed the carriage door behind him and went off with Jashuki, his walking stick, after Wyatt. They both disappeared into the building together.

I went to follow suit, but as soon as I began extending my leg, a hideous pain cracked into the underside of my knee and rippled down my calf. I couldn’t stop my strangled gasp, and then tensed further when Murtagh wrapped an arm around my torso and yanked me backwards, towards him.

‘Come here, you silly man,’ Murtagh said, his voice short. He bent over me and dug his fingers underneath my knee himself, and I kicked the opposite seat helplessly, shuddering. ‘We can always go back to Grimglass.’

I had several catty things I wanted to say in response to that, but I was too busy controlling my breathing through the swift, brutal work he did to get my leg semi-functional. By the time he was done, I was sagged back against the carriage panelling behind me, and he was sitting next to me, leaning forwards and his elbows on his knees, his fingers interlaced.

‘That leg, Felix.’ He said it heavily, and I had nothing else to add. Well, I hadn’t been in a brougham like this for two years, I didn’t know what would happen. But I felt ashamed, too, because how could I not know? Was it an inconvenience to them? Did I actually need a walking stick like Mildmay?

But would he think I was attempting to overshadow him? Trying to take his traumas and pains and add them to my own, as though I constantly had to win at some game of how much pain we’d both gone through?

I didn’t need a walking stick and Mildmay was going through enough pain of his own, with no Duke of Murtagh to release the muscles in his thigh. Perhaps I could offer to do it for him instead.

‘I can’t believe you,’ Murtagh said, his voice lower and quieter than before. He turned and looked at me sidelong. ‘You have your agenda and you haven’t cared a whit about me since.’

The air vanished from my lungs and I stared at him. Was that how he saw it?

‘I thought about sharing a room with you tonight,’ he said, taking a slow, deep breath. ‘But I don’t want to. Perhaps tomorrow night, at Wolford, if you can spare a thought for me instead of your vendetta against me. But not tonight, Felix. I don’t want to see you again tonight.’

He exited the carriage and left me there, mouth open. When he closed the door, he didn’t slam it as I expected him to. I watched his shoulders rise and fall in a great sigh as he walked towards the inn. I stared after him, hurt that he’d made his assumptions while knowing he wasn’t wrong to make them.

Of course, the wish to comfort him only came once he was gone. I wondered if that was cowardice.

*

Wyatt booked two rooms. One for Murtagh and himself, and one for Mildmay and I. The room was humbler than what I’d seen in the Althammara, but it was still nicer than any hotel or inn room Mildmay and I had stayed in when we’d first reached Bernatha and then Esmer. The beds had comfortable mattresses, worn but thick blankets and two pillows instead of a single thin one. The wallpaper was aged but had cost someone a decent amount once. The building was wired with electricity, so there was a ceiling light, as well as candles in one of the drawers.

Mildmay already had his cards out, he sat at the small table and was playing one of his many card games with himself. I sat on the bed and straightened out my leg and stared at it spitefully. When Murtagh had grabbed me like that and worked on my leg to help me, I’d somehow thought things were improved, or better.

I couldn’t understand why he’d offer me that kindness – painful as it was – when he was still upset with me.

‘Can hear you thinking from here,’ Mildmay said.

‘Do you want me to look at your leg?’ I said, looking up. ‘That carriage ride had to be difficult.’

Mildmay looked at me. ‘Ain’t comfortable, but powers and saints, I’ve had to do way worse with it over the years. A few hours in a carriage ain’t even them staircases you used to drag me up and down in the Mirador.’

The sting of it was sharp, but it didn’t make the fact of it any less true.

It was tempting to ask myself for the thousandth time how Mildmay had put up with me for so long. But of course I knew. He was abused horribly as a child. He was tormented every time he said no to his Keeper. He loved me as a brother. He’d put up with anything from the worst people in his life, and he would certainly put up with it from me.

It didn’t make me feel at all better.

‘Still,’ I said, my voice rougher than before, ‘I could look at it.’

Mildmay’s eyes narrowed, and I thought that even when we’d been living in Esmer, it hadn’t been this strange had it? Was he angry with me for going on this journey? He’d only found out because of Murtagh confronting me, and he’d not had a chance to talk to me about it since.

‘It’s fine,’ he said finally. ‘Leg’s doing fine, just walking from the carriage to the inn helped. S’not like it was back then, Felix. It’ll never be good, but it’s also not like it was.’

I nodded, relieved. Maybe he meant it then, and he didn’t need the help, and he wasn’t just rejecting me.

‘Thanks,’ Mildmay said, the word stiff and a little swallowed. ‘Thanks for asking.’

‘Ah, well, of course,’ I said, taken aback. ‘I could ask more, if you wanted.’

Mildmay was studying me now, I had to resist the urge to look away. After Murtagh’s words and now realising Mildmay and I were sharing a room for the first time in more than two years – which as it turned out, was very different to living on separate floors in a lighthouse – I couldn’t find any of that fire that had galvanised me to undertake this journey in the first place. I was completely out of my depth.

‘What is it?’ I said finally, feeling cornered.

‘Nothing,’ Mildmay said. ‘Just… I ain’t mad, y’know, that we’re here. It’s almost – what’s the word – nostalgic, isn’t it? Kethe knows we ain’t been on an adventure in years.’

‘Yes, because our adventures always go _so_ well,’ I said softly, leaning back against the bed and staring up at the ceiling. I carefully moved the foot of my bad leg back and forth, moving the calf in the way I couldn’t in the carriage. The idea of putting my leg through that again for another day didn’t appeal.

Mildmay had never complained about his thigh at all, despite the horrific scarring, despite the fact that the injury and curse had gone all the way down to the bone and twisted up the entire leg. Despite me forcing him through agony after agony with it, as a way of proving something to myself and to him worst, and sheer thoughtlessness at best.

‘I dunno,’ Mildmay said, ‘could be different this time, couldn’t it? Corambis has been good to us.’

‘Yes,’ I said. I suppose it had, really. I was alive and Malkar was dead, I was far away from the Mirador. I missed it still, sometimes, but nothing could undo the fact that the environment was bad for me and worse for Mildmay.

I thought of Shannon back in the Mirador and wondered what he was doing with himself these days. If he was still dominating and lovingly hurting the men that he loved, if he breakfasted lazily in the morning with them, feeding them morsels of food with his sticky, callous-free fingers. I wondered if he ever missed me. Likely he saw reason early. And of course Gideon couldn’t miss me, because I’d gotten him murdered.

‘Felix,’ Mildmay said.

‘Hm?’

‘You’d tell me if it ain’t good, right? You’d say if Corambis ain’t being good to you?’

‘I don’t even know what that means, Mildmay,’ I said, rolling over, realising that I could fall asleep now if I desired it. We still had to order dinner, the staff had informed us that it could be brought up to our room if we wanted as much, everything charged to the Duke of Murtagh’s account, of course. 

‘You like Corambis, don’t you?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

I thought of Murtagh in the room down the hall and I wanted to go to him, kneel for him, prove to him that I could offer something even if he was wroth with me. And perhaps he’d considered it too, considered and rejected it before I could even offer.

Beneath it curdled the knowledge that even that wouldn’t stop me from seeing Clovis. Perhaps it was that I’d had nothing to truly take up my passion and interest for two years. Perhaps I had been passionate about Grice’s work once. It seemed that I’d had many interests and then I’d gone down to that labyrinth on my own, come back and sliced my leg open and my entire life changed.

‘Are you out of sorts because of Murtagh? You gotta remember you don’t have to have anything to do with him. If you don’t want.’

I smiled to myself. Mildmay would never understand it. The thought that I could once have convinced him to love me as a tarquin might… It was strange how my love for him had evolved. At first I’d wanted him to take me, fuck me, ruin me, love me, and then I’d met Ingvard Vilker on The White Otter, on that horrid journey across the sea – though much less horrid than the journey on the Morskaiakrov, I supposed, but I wasn’t sane enough to remember that – and I’d realised I couldn’t be fucked anymore. Malkar and St. Crellifer’s together had destroyed my understanding of myself, and after that I could only fuck if I was the one doing the fucking.

So my fantasies changed, and I imagined taking Mildmay, making him mine, making it good for him, making him writhe for me, possessing him so that he could never leave me. Why, the obligation d’ame did some of that work on its own and I hadn’t even been the one to think up the idea.

But when I started working as a prostitute again in Corambis, when I’d learned I could suck and be fucked as I used to as a child – that I could enjoy it with someone like Murtagh – I’d wanted Mildmay to do all the things to me that tarquins did, and all that time, Mildmay would never have understood it.

There was no part of him built for that life. He’d never sought it out and all the sex he had – from what I understood – was simply two individuals sharing sensuality and pleasure and wanting nothing to do with the exchange of pain or suffering or obedience.

I couldn’t tell him that I ached for Murtagh and his ways. Even I didn’t always understand it. Murtagh wasn’t easy, and while I enjoyed his company, he had a habit of leaving me shaken open and in pieces on a regular basis, even if he did put me back together again afterwards. Few people wished to walk towards the storm or the earthquake knowingly, but I knelt for it and begged every time.

‘I like him,’ I said.

‘But if he hurts you-’

‘I’m in no danger with him,’ I said. ‘You’ve seen for yourself, even at his angriest, it’s nothing I can’t handle.’

No, Murtagh was unfairly mature about it all. He told me clearly he was upset with me, he walked away, he even offered an opportunity for reconnecting the following night. He didn’t raise his hand, he didn’t strike me as even Shannon did. Even at his angriest, I’d learned firsthand that I didn’t need to fear Murtagh hitting me. It was a new lesson, and I was afraid of that too.

‘Didn’t think you’d let me come,’ Mildmay said.

‘I wasn’t under the impression I could stop you,’ I said, laughing to myself. Oh, I was tired. Perhaps I’d eat later, or tomorrow morning. I had no stomach for it now. I’d not even let myself consider the fact that I was going somewhere that would remind me of St. Crellifer’s, even if it _was_ a marvel, even if it was some paradise-like version of the hell I’d experienced. It was still cognate to that madhouse, and all its torments and many petty, dehumanising tortures.

‘You’ve always had your ways,’ Mildmay said grudgingly. ‘Felix, I’m worried about you. Thought we were fine, but the past two months… I ain’t sure I’m any good to you. You know, even at our worst, even when we was like two bulls on phoenix in a field, it wasn’t like this. We’re in the same fucking room, but it feels like you’re not here at all. Fuck it, I miss you yelling at me and fighting with me because at least then you’re fucking _here_. I know you’re not always _fine.’_

‘You miss that because you were raised to think being abused was normal,’ I said, not even bothering to open my eyes. ‘Give it time, Mildmay, you won’t miss it anymore.’

‘I swear by all the powers,’ Mildmay said fervently under his breath. ‘You don’t fucking understand. You _try_ not to.’

I almost pushed up then, but I couldn’t stop thinking about St. Vanhalie and that I’d have to be on a carriage again tomorrow, likely sitting next to the man who had rejected me and not knowing if he’d accept me the day after. I was unconscionably upset that I wasn’t in his room, that I wasn’t with him right now. I was upset with Mildmay for taking even my acceptance of him and his life in the worst possible way.

No, I didn’t want to deal with any of this.

I was halfway to sleep when I heard him shift in the creaky chair.

‘I ain’t letting you off the hook no more,’ he muttered in as thick a Lower City accent as I’d heard in some time.

But he let me off the hook, because I fell asleep and he didn’t interrupt me again.

*

I woke blearily a few hours later, my leg hurting ferociously, all the way up to my back, as though someone had tied a string from the calf to my shoulder blades. I was hungry enough that I risked heading out while Mildmay got ready for bed, and then stared at the stairs leading down to the dining area with some chagrin. I took them one at a time, and even then each time I lowered the injured leg, I felt the way the muscles resisted all of it. I breathed a small sigh of relief when I reached the landing and then laughed when I realised I’d _never_ manage that labyrinth under the lighthouse again. Not for the rest of my life.

The tired receptionist rung out for a meal of odds and ends for me, charged to the Duke of Murtagh, and I ate bread that wasn’t as good as Adelais’ but might have been the best bread I’d ever had if I didn’t know what hers tasted like. The stew was hearty, there was bright green asparagus, and small custard tarts, three stacked like a pyramid. Normally I didn’t care about what I ate, but I was hungry enough to pay attention to everything and focus on anything that wasn’t my leg like an awkward painful animal under the table.

Making my way back up the stairs was its own huge effort – though at least easier than going downstairs – and I was exhausted by the end of it. I fell gracelessly into the bed and couldn’t find a comfortable position, which was how I knew it was truly bad. But there had been plenty of nights with Keeper and Lorenzo and Malkar where I couldn’t find a comfortable position either and I still fell asleep, because I’d learned as a child that it was more than possible to sleep through pain when you had no other choice.

*

Agony and fire slammed up through one half of my body, my breath whistling through my clenched teeth. A lifetime of training had me turning into the bed at the last minute to scream into the pillow instead of out loud, because I couldn’t wake Keeper or Lorenzo or Malkar, and sometimes they wanted me to be hurt and it was better if I could hide it from them.

Malkar had invented many ways to torture someone with magic, and at times, he had used an invisible fire that was so wretched I would be obedient if he so much as mentioned it in passing. It was what made my burning him to death so poignant, though I’d not thought of it at the time, there was no better way to erase him from this world.

But the pain reminded me of that. My leg pulled in and I knew immediately what it was, grabbing the pillow and shoving it hard into my face as I sat and tried with a violently shaking hand to get to the muscles under my knee.

My hand was shaking too hard, too weak from the pain in the rest of my body to manage it.

‘Sacred bleeding scabbed-over _fuck,’_ another rasping voice in the dark, and as I tried to freeze and couldn’t manage it, the overhead light turned on. Candles and witchlights were less cruel.

Mildmay stared at me in horror, I stared back, tears spilling involuntarily, and then another spasm wrecked my leg and my thigh and I arched backwards, slamming into the headboard, keening into the pillow.

I managed to jam my knuckles up behind my knee, graceless and more like a sharp little punch than anything, trying to remember desperately what Murtagh had done. But all I could remember in that moment was how he had soothed me and cradled me and praised me, and I felt so damnably lonely in that moment that my shoulders heaved on a sob. I wanted to be the kind of person who could be stoic even through pain like this, but it broke down every part of me until all I had left was the desperate fear that I’d never wanted Mildmay to see this.

Mildmay was beside me, talking, and then he was trying to pull my hand away from the underside of my leg and I was shaking my head over and over again. Finally he stopped, I could hear the questioning tone and my name and I gasped wetly where my teeth were clenched on the pillow and managed:

‘My leg. It…happens.’

‘The fuck?’ he breathed.

He didn’t know. He’d never known. He’d never seen anything since that original injury. He hadn’t seen what it looked like after I awoke, he’d never seen it after it was infected, he’d never seen it once the stitches were removed. In the time that followed, he only saw the varying degrees to which I limped or managed to mask the limp in the morning. The idea of him having anything to do with a wound that he’d repeatedly blamed me for, horrified me.

‘Felix, Felix, wait- _Kethe,_ look, I’ve had cramps. I’m gonna- Can I…?’

Mildmay had an arm around my shaking shoulders, and I was too busy riding the wave of pain and nausea to shake him off. His other hand glanced over my calf, where the muscle was pulled so tight it felt like it was tearing itself apart, and then pushed into the outside side of my thigh, and then over the top of it, and then he swore again.

‘Fuck me sideways ‘til I cry,’ he said. ‘The whole leg’s gone. Mine ain’t been that bad for years. Here, does under the knee help?’

I nodded, fingers burning and hurting through their badly healed breaks where I grasped the pillow. This was humiliating. Far more humiliating than when it had been Murtagh. How could I ever protect Mildmay, when I was always overshadowing his pain?

His arm tightened around my shoulders and he levered my hand away where it was jammed up under the knee. I was glad for my trousers, because he couldn’t see the scar itself. Still, his longer, clever fingers seemed to assess the whole situation, and while he didn’t work as quickly as Murtagh did, he found the same place that I could find when I wasn’t half out of my mind with pain. Pressing his fingers there was its own misery and I jerked, swallowing down the hideous sound I wanted to make.

‘Kethe, you really are right in the fucking middle of it. Hang on, easy now, it’s like unravelling a knot, you just gotta wait a bit.’

‘I _know,’_ I bit out furiously, even though my voice was wet and ruined.

‘S’pose you do,’ Mildmay said, like he wasn’t bothered. ‘You could’ve told me, Felix. You could’ve _told_ me it was this fucking bad.’

‘ _Don’t,’_ I managed, fury giving way to something despairing. I didn’t think I could handle anyone lecturing me at this point, not even Mildmay.

Mildmay twitched, then awkwardly petted my shoulder and said nothing. After a few minutes, it really did feel like the calf muscle suddenly remembered how to unlock, and I shuddered a huge, aching breath and had to stop myself from bursting into tears. It was all I normally did in these moments. And Mildmay’s fingers were checking the calf and the top of my thigh, and then to my surprise he moved his hand down to my ankle and was moving his fingers there instead.

‘The carriage,’ Mildmay said abruptly. ‘And them _fucking_ stairs. They were bad for me, too. You should take Jashuki tomorrow.’

His walking stick.

I shook my head vehemently.

‘It’s not going to be any use in the carriage,’ I said roughly. And then, because I just couldn’t help myself, because I wanted him to stop being kind to me: ‘You were right, my darling brother, I can’t go down those stairs into the labyrinth anymore. Not ever again.’

I felt Mildmay hunch, even the way his arm was hooked around me changed. But then he sighed.

‘It was just mean bullshit, Felix, I was desperate and scared. Fuck, if I’d known it was this bad… Why ain’t you ever fucking told me? Not even once?’

‘So you can tell me it’s my fault? Please. One brother behaving like that is enough, isn’t it? Why have two?’

My voice was shaking, higher than usual, and I rested my forehead on my other knee and risked straightening my leg a little, biting off a sound as the calf threatened to seize again. Mildmay’s hand didn’t leave my leg, and a younger me would have considered arousal from having him so close to me. Now I felt ashamed, it was terrible that despite the humiliation, I just wanted him to care. And that was ridiculous, because Mildmay cared all the time. He couldn’t help himself. Half his problem was that he cared too much.

‘What?’ Mildmay said, after a long silence. ‘Don’t tell me you-’

He never finished the sentence and I was too tired to finish it for him. I couldn’t believe this had happened again. Was this what I was doomed to if I tried to leave Grimglass? Would it be the same tomorrow night? The night after?

But no, it had never happened two nights in a row before.

But I’d also not tried to cram myself into an undersized carriage for not even a full day’s worth of travelling since the injury.

‘We gotta talk about it,’ Mildmay said. ‘When you got cut up. I never knew that it’s never been right between us since.’

‘It’s been _fine,’_ I said, then took a huge, shaking breath as his hand shifted on my back. I tensed, and normally he took that as the cue to stop touching me, but he didn’t.

‘Can you straighten it?’ he said, ignoring me. He moved the hand from around my shoulders and placed both on my leg, moving it slowly. ‘Even them hocuses removing that spell between us wasn’t like tonight. I’ve never seen you like that. Not since…’ Mildmay looked up, across the room, and I wondered if he was seeing me at my worst, when I’d been insane from Malkar’s curse and he’d been dragging me across the country to find someone who could fix me. ‘ _Kethe_.’

Eventually, we got my leg straightened. I moved my foot back and forth a few times tentatively and felt how my whole body would be unforgiving tomorrow. I thought about having to walk down those stairs again and squeezed my eyes shut. I’d taken the elevator for granted. After all, by the time I recovered in the lighthouse, the elevator was functioning. Grimglass was flat, almost none of the buildings – except Kay’s – were two storeys, and I’d never needed to go up there.

Aside from one or two steps here and there, which were painful enough, I’d never thought to consider what an entire flight of stairs might do to me, because I’d never given them a single thought in the Mirador. Stairs were a part of life, negotiating fifty a day was normal.

I could never go back to the Mirador. I knew that. I did. But everything I’d lost felt like it was attacking me freshly all over again.

Instead of going back to his bed, Mildmay sat on mine, his hands in his lap.

‘That fucking labyrinth, I never wanted you down there, but it never would’ve let you alone, would it?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘So it was either you go down there alone, or with me.’

‘Yes,’ I said, wondering why we were even having this conversation. Wondering if it was building to him finding another way to show me how what happened tonight was my fault, when I already knew it was. I sagged back against the headboard, still moving my foot, rolling the ankle. Even my back and shoulders felt tight, I stretched my arms out in front of me and ignored the way Mildmay watched me.

It was so savagely unfair, how much I wanted Murtagh to have been by my side during that. I’d spent years craving Mildmay, and I still needed him and loved him, but Murtagh had asserted himself alongside my brother as someone I needed.

‘At the time,’ Mildmay said slowly, ‘the physician-practicioner said you might never walk again.’

I remembered Mildmay yelling that at me a few days later, but I hadn’t paid much attention as my leg could move and I was tired of him yelling at me. The words hit me freshly all over again.

‘But then you woke up and were the same as always, a bit tireder, and then I found out _how_ you got hurt and I lost my shit, thought you were trying to get yourself killed, and then it was done and I don’t know why I ever thought things were back to normal. You know, given all the fucking shit we have between us.’

It was the most Mildmay had talked to me about something like this in a long time. I couldn’t help but listen. His accent had rounded out. He completed more of his sentences. And briefly I realised that when I’d woken up in the middle of my body seizing, I’d slipped back into my old Pharaohlight accent and he’d been kind enough to not even point it out. I was blindly grateful.

‘You weren’t trying to get yourself killed back then, were you?’ Mildmay said.

‘No. It really was just an accident,’ I said, closing my eyes. ‘Just a stupid accident.’

‘But I made you think it was your fault.’

‘I knew it was an accident.’

‘ _Still,’_ Mildmay said stubbornly, ‘you think it’s all your fault.’

‘You _said_ it was,’ I ground out angrily. ‘You said it was and then didn’t let me forget it, whenever you saw me limping, whenever I-’

No. I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to be this bitter person.

‘You were right, anyway,’ I said. ‘Even if it was an accident, I clearly wasn’t equipped to handle it on my own. I could have asked a magician to join me, to help.’

‘None of ‘em know labyrinths,’ Mildmay said. ‘I don’t know much about that hocus shit but I know them Corambins know dick about it.’

Well, yes, that had occurred to me at the time as well.

‘Why’d you let me?’ Mildmay said, his voice raw. ‘Why’d you let me get away with thinking you were trying to kill yourself?’

‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘I told you the truth and you didn’t accept it, and after a while it seemed like it wasn’t worth it anyway.’

‘You…’ Mildmay made a strange incredulous sound in the back of his throat. ‘You’ve changed so much. I mean, I know you’ve always hated yourself, we’re both a dab hand at that.’

‘Aren’t we ever,’ I said, smiling a little.

‘But I’ve spent years thinking you were happy here, and when you weren’t, you were just…moody. Instead it’s been years of you blaming yourself for a thing that was what, making you wake up at night like _this?_ Alone? This thing where I know I fucking left that metal out around the place, and it wasn’t just you, Felix, this isn’t on you. Powers and saints, has anyone known the pain you’ve been in? Have you seen anyone about it?’

‘Murtagh found out recently,’ I said, not bothering to open my eyes when I sensed him looking at me. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do. Besides, it’s not normally this bad. This happens so rarely. The cramps are usually bearable.’

‘Sacred bleeding fuck,’ Mildmay murmured to himself, in that tone that mean he was still upset at what I was going through.

‘Mildmay,’ I said, ‘it’s nothing, really. And after this little adventure, I think I’ll be done with them for some time, and you won’t need to think about it.’

‘You must think I’m real fucking stupid if you think I’m gonna forget how much your leg’s been hurting you and how much you’ve been fucking hiding it from me. I swear by all the powers, Felix, did I do it to you? Is it my fault you’re so small now?’

_‘Small?’_ I opened my eyes, my anger flaring, but there was something so lost on his face, in the brilliant jade green of his eyes. I hated seeing that expression there.

‘You’re my brother,’ Mildmay said, not looking away. ‘I want you happy. I want you safe. But maybe I got obsessed with the last and forgot about the first, or maybe I thought the second would mean the first just came true on its own. I don’t fucking know, and you won’t fucking _tell me.’_

I rubbed at my face. ‘Do you really think someone like me can ever be happy?’

‘I don’t know! But I think if you’re hating yourself for something that wasn’t your fucking fault, that’s not gonna help. I didn’t fucking want you to hate yourself, powers and saints, that’s the last thing I wanted. I just wanted you… I just wanted you to stop haring off and making decisions that could ruin the both of us. You nearly died. I’ve never seen you like that. And the _blood…’_

‘So I stopped making those sorts of decisions, Mildmay.’

‘You’re miserable as fuck in that lighthouse, and maybe you’ve forgotten, but I’m not your fucking Keeper. It’s been two years, you don’t talk about Malkar, you don’t talk about Melusine, you don’t talk about Gideon, you don’t talk about anything, and just ask me what I’m doing. I’m mad at myself, but mad at you too, because you wanted me to stop seeing you, stop noticing you. And I fucking did. I fucking stopped.’

‘Listen, we’re both tired, and tomorrow-’

‘It’s how I know I’m closer to the truth, because look at that, Felix, what are you doing? What are you trying to do? Kethe, you think I can’t tell?’

I glared at him. ‘Maybe you could have some mercy, if you can tell what I’m trying to do, and stop talking about it.’

‘I want to help you,’ he said, his voice rising.

‘You _can’t!’_ I shouted. ‘You can’t help me! You’ve known me long enough by now to know that, haven’t you?’

‘What, because you’re beyond help? Is that what I’m supposed to believe? We’re all just supposed to give up on Felix? Seems like a shit game with shit odds. You’re the only one playing to win, here.’

I had to grit my teeth then, to stop myself from saying something truly nasty just to get him to shut up. He must have seen it, though his expression softened instead of turning wary.

‘I didn’t know how much I hurt you,’ Mildmay said. ‘That’s all. I didn’t know. And you didn’t want me to know, right, you know, I understand. But that’s no better than me not wanting you to know how much you’ve hurt me. Somewhere along the way you realised you were hurting me and didn’t want to no more. But you never wanted me to realise the same. And I know why. You think that’s how it should be. You think that’s what you deserve.’

For someone who was mostly taciturn, I was more than ready for Mildmay to go back to his normal ways of speaking. Look at him, using all his better diction against me like that.

‘You’re wrong,’ Mildmay said. ‘And I’m sorry. Felix, I ain’t seen you in pain like that, and I know what it’s like. I know how bad it has to be, to look like that.’

‘I’m not as good as you at tolerating pain.’

‘Bullshit,’ he said flatly.

‘Is it?’ I smiled mirthlessly at him. ‘Is it? You went mostly uncomplaining everywhere with me in the Mirador, didn’t you? Would I have done the same if the situation was reversed? I very much doubt it. Let’s just not, tonight. I’m tired.’

‘But-’

‘I’m _tired,’_ I said, wishing he would understand. ‘I’m tired, we have to get in that brougham tomorrow, and I can’t go back to Grimglass without seeing this through, and I don’t want to see the inn’s staircase let alone that _carriage,_ and I seem to have made a very nice rock and a hard place for myself with no good options. I just want to sleep.’

Mildmay opened his mouth, then closed it, and then got up and turned off the overhead light. I lay back down on the bed and rubbed at the outside of my hip, even there touching the muscle through the skin was like finding bits of broken glass inside of myself.

‘You like Grimglass,’ I said softly, when I could tell he was lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling like I was. ‘It’s a good, quiet life. You’re thriving there. And I had an accident that was my own fault, and I’m mostly used to it.’

‘That’s what you tell yourself,’ Mildmay said, just as quietly. ‘It’s not right, Felix. I’m sorry. I’m just sorry for seeing things so wrong for such a long time. You’ve been trying to be so good, and I didn’t even know.’

‘Don’t,’ I said.

‘I’m happy, you know, that you’re my brother and not some other asshole. I’m glad it’s you.’

_Don’t,_ I thought.

His words made my eyes burn all over again. And then he turned over and went to sleep, and I pressed my thumb and index finger into my eyelids and tried not to cry. Stupidly, I wanted to see Murtagh, I wanted to talk to him about it, and all I could see was the cast to his face and the shadowed amber gaze and the hurt in his voice when he told me that he didn’t want me to spend the night with him.

Mildmay’s words sunk into me like stones, and there, at the darkest, mucky part of me, a sentence repeated over and over, bright like a gem that flashes iridescent when you least expect it.

_You’ve been trying to be so good, and I didn’t even know._

I wanted it to be true. I was so tired I didn’t bother fighting it. I let the sentence and the cadence of his perfect voice repeat over and over in my head until I fell asleep.


	19. Unexpected

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s note:** I should have tagged for Felix’s internalised ableism a while back, but I’m tagging for it now. (Refusal to use mobility aids because you don’t want to be seen as ‘weak’ or even denial of permanent loss of function is internalised ableism (it wouldn’t happen in a society where we fully accepted and embraced disability and disabled people), and I’ve had to put up with a lot of my own over the years lol)
> 
> **Also:** Very dubious consent. Sounding.

_Felix_

*

The following morning I woke from nightmares of Malkar and the fantom both raping me, followed unsurprisingly by a shocking headache, my body feeling like it had gone several rounds in a war I was not expected to win. I swung my legs over the bed and sat there, staring down at my injured calf. For the first time I not only doubted if I could go through with this, I doubted if I could get into the carriage at all. I had visions of myself just having to live here in Millefol for the rest of my life.

Mildmay entered the room, his hair freshly wet, took one look at me and his face twisted in something like pity. I stared back at him, the conversation from the night before drifting back to me. I couldn’t believe he’d seen me like that.

‘Kethe,’ he said. ‘Did you sleep at all?’

‘I did,’ I said, moving my leg back and forth a few times. I stood carefully, keeping all my weight on my other leg, slowly increasing the weight on my injured one until I had to stop. When I opened my eyes, Jashuki was there in Mildmay’s hand, thrust towards me. ‘I don’t need it.’

‘Felix, your leg is fucked. Take it.’

‘Your thigh isn’t much better,’ I said, more calmly than I felt. ‘I just…might need some help getting down the stairs.’

He knew now, and I didn’t want to ask for help, but I also didn’t know how I was going to get down that staircase. People assumed going down was easier than going up, even I’d assumed that, but up was always easier.

‘You really think you can help his brother?’ Mildmay said, drawing back Jashuki for now. I was surprised at how quickly he’d accepted my denial of it, but relieved. I wasn’t ready to consider a walking stick, no matter how much one might help.

‘I think it’s worth a try,’ I said, smiling ruefully. ‘I think if anyone can help him, it will be me. But Ferrand’s so wroth with me.’ I paused, biting my lower lip. ‘I want to stay with him tonight, Mildmay. In Wolford. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him properly since all of this started and I owe him an apology.’

Mildmay studied me for a while, then nodded.

I took a ginger step forwards and winced. Ah, yes, today was not going to be a forgiving day. Not at all.

‘Powers and saints, now I know exactly what makes you look like that in the mornings,’ Mildmay said heavily. ‘I know you had your reasons, but I wish you’d said something. Felix, you’re not meant to go round in agony every fucking minute. Even if the injury was completely your fault, and it’s _not,_ you don’t deserve this.’

‘It’s what I have,’ I said, but his words felt good. Perhaps we really had cleared the air the night before, even though it didn’t seem like I’d done much more than yell hysterically about my leg and the lighthouse.

‘You _have_ a brother,’ Mildmay said stubbornly. ‘You have a brother, we have money, Corambis has good doctors. I know that leg ain’t ever gonna be fixed, but I know how to help a leg like that. I have my own, y’know.’

‘Because of me,’ I said, faintly bitter.

‘Felix, you treated me like shit and you saved my life. Seems like if you’re gonna focus on one you can remember the other sometimes. Look at me. Am I in the Lower City? No. Am I killing people or cardsharping or illiterate? No. I like reading, it turns out. I’m fucking grateful. Do I need to have anything to do with Keeper or that world again? Fucking _no._ Do you think I could’ve done that shit on my own? When did you start thinking I hated you?’

‘I didn’t…’ I said awkwardly, then had to sit down on the bed again. ‘I know you love me. But let’s be honest with each other, you hate aspects of me, as I do, as anyone should.’

He stared at me with those jade green eyes like the words hurt _him._ And I stared back, thinking that I hadn’t phrased it that badly, had I?

‘I _don’t_ blame you for my fucking leg, and I’m not gonna start on your say so, and you should stop it too. Easier said than done, I know. Sacred bleeding fuck, Felix, you’re not thinking…’ He stopped and his forehead furrowed. ‘You don’t think you got that injury because I got mine? As a way of balancing the scales?’

I shrugged.

‘You know,’ Mildmay said darkly, ‘for someone who don’t believe in no gods, you sure believe a lot of the religious shit that just weighs you down. Your life isn’t penance for mine and I don’t want it to be! And if that’s how it feels, then…then I don’t know what to do to make that better. I don’t know, Felix. How am I meant to do anything about that?’

His voice broke, his words slurred together harder, and he stared at me like I had all of the answers. His desperation pressed at me and I wanted to fix all of this for him, but I didn’t know how either.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t…want you to think that you should. I’m like this, sometimes.’

‘I _want_ to help you, it don’t matter if you think I should or shouldn’t, I want to. I like feeling like I can. Even us talking last night, I wish it ain’t had to come on the back of you hurting like that, but I’ve missed it. I ain’t expecting a brother who’ll suddenly not be _you,_ Felix, and you’re the one I put everything on the line for, because I wanted to. I’d fucking do it again. A million times. I mean I could do without Nera, and, well…’

I stared at him, at first shocked by his outburst, and then in spite of myself, I laughed.

‘I could do without the Lost City of Nera too,’ I said.

‘And I didn’t like Mavortian.’ He had a gleam of a smile in his eyes, and I wished we were the kind of brothers that embraced each other. The feeling eased into an ache. No wonder I’d fallen in love with him once, he was so easy to love.

‘And Malkar,’ I said.

‘ _Fucking_ Strych,’ Mildmay said. He never used Malkar’s name, not after he’d been tortured by him under his other name, Brinvillier Strych. He’d never talked about it, but like all of his scars, he bore them with dignity. ‘Is it really not better for you now?’

‘I think I’m…’ the word got locked in my throat. _I think I’m lonely._ ‘No, of course it’s better.’

‘That weren’t what you were gonna say,’ Mildmay said.

‘I know, but… I can’t today. Maybe another day. Not now. We’re going to have to face that staircase, after all.’

‘I hate ‘em,’ Mildmay said. ‘I’ll help you. Come on. You gotta have some breakfast before we leave.’

I stood and dressed slowly, and when we were about to leave he held an arm out to me, and I stared at it for a long time before accepting it. We weren’t the kind of brothers who touched, except when we were saving each other’s lives, except when I kissed him to press a curse into him that was long-vanished now. It felt alien and strange to have him offer this kind of support.

I liked it.

*

I realised Mildmay must have talked to Murtagh about my leg before I woke, when the carriage stopped the second time in two hours and Mildmay practically dragged me out to stretch my leg. It was Murtagh and Wyatt who kept an eye on the time and called for the stops, and Murtagh only left the carriage once to piss by the side of the road before getting back into the brougham. They weren’t asking to stop for themselves.

I almost said something, but I couldn’t deny that being able to straighten the leg out and walk a few ginger steps made it feel less like a coil was winding up brutally in my calf and behind my knee.

Still, nothing could stop the fact that several hours later, the leg was terrible all over again and I was forcing myself to breathe slowly and carefully through the pain and hoping we’d get to Wolford soon. And when Mildmay pushed Jashuki towards me, I very nearly took it.

We stopped in the rain by a smaller inn than the one we’d stayed at in Millefol. Wolford was a pretty village, less neat in appearance, and though the rain made the black stone of the buildings seem grim, there was an uncommon amount of care in the carpentry. Carved bannisters and railings, wooden gargoyles, wooden sculptures. Even in the relative rush – it wasn’t as though I could go _fast_ with my leg being what it was – to the shade beneath the inn, I could see that it would be a pretty little town in the light.

Before Murtagh went into the inn after Wyatt, I reached out and placed a hand on his sleeve. He stopped.

‘May I stay with you tonight?’ I said, biting back the Sir that flowed more naturally to my lips here than it did sometimes in my own room.

Murtagh didn’t answer immediately, but then nodded. He walked into the inn and Mildmay and I followed. I paced slowly in the foyer, and when Mildmay handed me Jashuki a third time, I took it with a half-hearted glare, and then leaned on it, taking some of the weight off my sore leg.

‘This is ridiculous,’ I muttered.

‘It’s fucked,’ Mildmay agreed. ‘We can get Johnson to make you a walking stick when we get back. Don’t care if you don’t use it every day, but you need one.’

‘I don’t.’

Wyatt stood at the counter with Murtagh across the room, and Murtagh bent to talk quietly in Wyatt’s ear, and his manservant nodded and then smiled. I liked Wyatt. I found his ruthless efficiency and easy discretion fascinating.

‘I get it more’n most,’ Mildmay said, his voice low. ‘I didn’t want anything like it myself, didn’t even want Jashuki and tried to say no. But it’s there to _help_ you. It’ll be your friend, Felix. And hey, if you want, you can hit people with it.’

I looked at him, and Mildmay’s eyes smiled at me even as his mouth couldn’t.

‘I do like to hit people,’ I said. The little lines around his eyes crinkled in response.

‘It’d make you look good. A nice fancy cane, some fancy hocus clothes.’

‘And no one to wear them for,’ I said, some of my peaceable mood vanishing. ‘And nowhere to go with them.’

I thought Mildmay would say something bitter, or how it was good that I wasn’t seeing people, but instead he was silent for some minutes. Then, when I thought our conversation was over, he said: ‘It don’t gotta stay the same forever. Maybe if you got more of them fancy clothes, you’d want to show them off more.’

His expression was open, curious, and I didn’t think he was being any nicer than usual, and yet… There was something in his words that plucked away inside of me, opened me up, made me think that if I did have some new clothes, I might think of somewhere to wear them. If anything, perhaps Murtagh would appreciate them.

A few minutes later, Wyatt returned. He nodded me in Murtagh’s direction, and then told Mildmay he had the option of having his own room, or staying with Wyatt.

‘Do you play cards?’ Mildmay said.

‘I have been known to play the odd round of belote and two-player brandeln,’ Wyatt said, even as I walked towards Murtagh. ‘Among others. You could teach me some more if you like.’

‘Then yeah, we can share a room.’

‘Excellent,’ Wyatt said.

I joined Murtagh after handing Jashuki back to Mildmay. Murtagh lifted his arm, then dropped it abruptly and I realised that he’d nearly gone to slide it around my waist in front of everyone. He did it so easily in the lighthouse that I recognised the gesture for what it was and missed it acutely when it didn’t happen.

‘No stairs,’ Murtagh said, as we walked down a corridor. ‘Wyatt would normally vet the room first, and I think he’s glad to not have to.’

I nodded and couldn’t think what to say. I knew Murtagh was still furious with me, even if he was being civil, even if the brougham was ordered to stop some six times before we reached our destination.

Murtagh let us into a room that was both larger in size than the one I’d stayed in the night before, but also humbler in appearance. It was quaint, nearly cosy, and the red and brown rugs on the floor were well made. In here, too, wooden walls had been carved in sections, and the wooden shades over the ceiling lights were intricate.

‘Is Wolford known for this kind of craftsmanship?’ I said, looking around. ‘I couldn’t help but notice.’

‘Yes, it’s got the artisanal trade college,’ Murtagh said. ‘If you’ve got a wayward child who likes to paint, they’re usually sent here. But carpentry and stained glass is what it’s most known for. Those who care about ceramics usually go to Great Ilhey.’

‘I see.’

‘Why did you want to stay with me tonight, Felix?’

My arms prickled, a cold shiver went through me. It was difficult not to sink to my knees before him and bow my head and wait for him to do whatever he wished. I craved it, and it was unfair to expect that he wanted to offer it. Though I almost wanted him to be the kind of person who would lash out and hurt me, he’d never been that person.

‘I wanted to apologise,’ I said, my words uneasy. ‘And…’

‘And?’ He walked closer to me and placed a hand on my jaw, making me look down at him. ‘Tell me.’

‘I missed you,’ I said.

His expression was still sharp, eyes narrowed, but something softened all the same. And then, because it came to me so easily when I was around him, and because all of me had been bending towards it since I saw him in the lighthouse – even with my fury energising me – I lowered my gaze to the floor.

‘I want to serve you, Sir,’ I said.

Murtagh inhaled sharply, his fingers tightened on my jaw. ‘I hope you don’t think that you can make up for everything by getting on your knees, Felix. I understand that you feel compelled to do this, but the way you’ve gone about the past few weeks has been callous and hurtful.’

‘Even treasonous,’ I said.

‘Maybe I am a monster,’ Murtagh said, ‘for the things I’ve done. They do call me the Dragon of Desperen Field, and they don’t do it for my kindnesses. But the Carey family tried. Everything we could do, everything we’d heard of, remedies that were the desperate reachings of people who refused to give up on someone that Corambis had already given up on. We tried everything and then we invented more to try. Maybe you _can_ do something, I’ve considered it, but I’ve learned for myself how much your care for others vanishes when you have something you’re determined to do.’

The words dug into me, one by one, and I knew he wasn’t even trying to hurt me for the sake of it. I kept my eyes lowered and wished desperately that my shins and knees were on the ground, even as it would be torture for my calf.

‘Perhaps,’ I said delicately, ‘you could choose to see it as… Everything you say is true, of course, but I never stopped caring for you. I chose to care for your brother, too, specifically in my capacity as a wizard with a gift for helping people who have lived what your brother may be living. I have been an aethereal by your country’s standards. I have lived possession. I have been haunted. I have been driven insane with magic. I have been cursed. I have spent time in an asylum. I don’t expect you to understand it, but I’m not doing this because I don’t care about you.’

His hand moved from my face to my neck, warm palm curling around the chilled skin. His fingers rested on my spine where it connected to my skull, tracing patterns over the tender skin beneath my tied-back hair.

‘And yet you still hurt me,’ he said.

‘I am sorry. But perhaps it hurts me too, Ferrand, to know that he’s in there. Perhaps I’m afraid for him because I was once so afraid for myself. But I am truly sorry.’ The words were shaky, for I wasn’t used to apologising in situations like this without the consequences being catastrophic. I didn’t want to be reminded of Malkar, not today, but Murtagh did remind me of him. If not in his words, then sometimes in his ability to make me feel like I was hooked into him and couldn’t escape. I still didn’t know what he wanted to do, how he’d punish me, but I was certain he wanted me to hurt for him.

‘Mildmay came to see me this morning, he said your leg seized overnight. You must be _exhausted_ , Felix.’

I blinked down at the floor, and that hand at the back of my neck became two hands reaching around me to slowly untie my hair. It fell – rain-damp – around me, and he kept both hands at my shoulders, thumbs up against the sides of my neck.

‘What if you’re right?’ Murtagh said, his voice rough, and so wrecked I couldn’t help but meet his amber gaze. ‘What if you’re right and St. Vanhalie is a terrible place? What if you _can_ help him? I can’t…I can’t think on it.’

‘We’ll know tomorrow,’ I said. ‘But you don’t have to think about it tonight, Sir.’

His lips pressed together, and then he slowly pushed his thumbs into my neck while staring up at me. ‘You tempt me, Felix. Even when I’m furious with you, I still want you. But first I’m going to organise something for us to eat, and you’re going to have a bath and soak some of the stiffness out of that calf. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘And keep calling me Sir, while we’re in this room.’ He moved his hands away from my neck and shoulders and instead dragged his fingers up my scalp, knotting my hair into a tight, heavy grip. ‘I like it.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ I breathed.

He smiled at me like a lion that had finally caught its quarry; slow, predatory and very sure.

*

He left me to wash my own hair in the bath, no doubt remembering – as I did – the lance of memory that had struck me the first time I’d bathed in the presence of Murtagh. While I didn’t think I was at risk of horrifically remembering being plunged back into the Sim, I couldn’t be certain. After washing my hair, I sat stiffly upright, trying to make sure my calf was completely submerged. Much like the brougham, the bathtub was also made for Corambins so I couldn’t lounge comfortably. It made me realise I had no idea where Mildmay had found my bathtub in the lighthouse, but he’d definitely looked for one with my height in mind.

Murtagh returned and dragged over a footstool, then reached into the water after pushing up his sleeves, moving his hands over the scar on my calf. The scar tissue was softening, it had turned rigid after the trials of the day, a phenomenon that happened that I didn’t understand.

‘Not too bad,’ he said, as though surprised. ‘The hot water seems to be helping a lot.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ I said tiredly, my eyelids fluttering just from having those fingers move confidently over the muscles, checking them.

He spent half an hour on my leg, running more hot water when it began to cool. He prodded me back to rest against the wall behind the bath and my eyes closed. He didn’t talk, my breathing turned sluggish as he used long strokes to help the muscles lengthen and relax.

‘That’s good, darling, isn’t it?’ Murtagh said, sounding pleased.

‘Yes, Sir,’ I murmured.

‘Good,’ he said, and I swallowed down the sound I wanted to make in response to him dragging out the word like that. And then his hand smoothed down the inside of my thigh, and I thought it was part of the treatment until he wrapped his fingers around my cock and began to slowly squeeze and massage that instead. I was breathless within seconds, my eyes flying open and meeting his. ‘And that? That’s good too, Felix, isn’t it?’

I breathed out some sound of agreement, then groaned. I’d gotten hard early on, when he’d started touching me. I couldn’t help it, my being naked in the bath, him being fully clothed beside me, and my body knew what to do. But he’d ignored it. Now he found that thread of arousal and gripped it up, he kept massaging my cock until I was fully erect. Then he just trailed his fingertips up and down it, swirling no harder against me than the water.

I stared at him.

‘That’s very good,’ Murtagh said. ‘You look lovely, Felix. I want you to get out and go back into the main bedroom and have something to eat. You’re allowed to wear a robe, but do not put on any other item of clothing while I shower. You can do that, can’t you? You’ll be my good boy, won’t you, Felix?’

_Ah, damn._

I stared at him, and he gave me a short, brisk grin before stepping away and leaving me swimming dizzily in arousal and heat and the tension-relaxation that came from that bath followed by having Murtagh so close to me, his hand on me.

He began stripping for the shower, and it took me a couple of minutes to push up from the bath, stepping out of it and reaching for the towel. I walked out of the bathroom, limping a bit worse than usual, but not like I was this morning and nothing like the night before. I dried myself as I heard the spray of the shower. On a small table with two seats were two battered cloches.

I walked over, keeping the towel wrapped around me. The room was warm enough from the stoked, oversized fireplace to not need a robe. I could hear rain pouring heavily outside, even though the heavy velvet curtains muffled the sound.

Dinner was simple, two slices of dry roast beef with gravy, a generous portion of fresh, steamed vegetables, some of which I didn’t recognise, and an orangey-coloured mash that was more savoury than I expected.

When Murtagh came out, naked and easily bearing his battle scars and the weight he carried around his middle, he smiled at me. I didn’t know whether to trust it or not. He was upset with me, and it was my experience that upset people were not kind. Or if they were, it was a false embrace before they shoved the knife in.

‘May I brush my teeth, Sir?’ I asked.

He nodded, waved me to the bathroom, and when I returned he was still in the middle of his meal. He paused when I entered again.

‘I want you to drop the towel,’ he said, ‘and then lie on the bed, face up, with your head hanging off the side.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

A shiver went through me. I knew what that position was for, and I let the towel fall and walked over to the bed. I lay across it and as I settled into position, moving my hair so it wasn’t stuck to my shoulders, Murtagh put the knife and fork down, wiped at his mouth with the napkin provided, and then walked over to me. The first thing he did was put his hand on my throat, rubbing his palm up and down.

I shuddered heavily, my hands restlessly moved on the quilt, and he reached over me and took one arm up by the wrist.

‘I want you to touch yourself,’ he said, ‘but don’t come.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ I said, his other hand still on my throat.

I wrapped a hand around myself as he let go of my arm and took hold of his own cock, which was still soft. I opened my mouth for it automatically, my cheeks already warming, head feeling heavier from the way gravity pulled at it. I’d never had great cause to love this as a prostitute, having been pushed past unconsciousness several times, but Shannon had loved me servicing him this way first thing in the morning, knowing we’d then go out together into the Mirador and I’d demolish anyone who stood in my way with the taste of his bitter seed in my throat and mouth.

Murtagh was quiet, I couldn’t see his face. His cock rested deep in my mouth, slowly getting hard, and his hips were still. My hand moved slowly on my own cock, for I was already hard and the feeling of having my mouth taken this way was heady.

‘No bruises today,’ Murtagh said eventually, as his cock lengthened and thickened in my mouth and I swallowed saliva in a way that moved my tongue against his cock. I could feel my gag reflex already, I forced my throat to relax as much as possible, swallowing on purpose to gently trigger it off, so that I could practice calming it before he forced his way down. ‘But know that I’d love to mark you up, Felix. I think about how wonderfully you took that spanking often.’

_Even lately?_ I thought.

‘Are you afraid I’m going to hurt you for the sake of it, because I’m angry?’ Murtagh said, easing his hips back and then pushing forwards, testing my mouth, my throat. I choked once, briefly, as the head of his cock wedged into my throat before the angle was right. I shifted on the bed, my head dropped back further, and then he was in and I couldn’t breathe, and my cock jerked in my hand and I had to let it go briefly. ‘Did you come tonight expecting to be punished, darling?’

I couldn’t reply and his hips moved back and pushed forwards again, deeper, and I was going to drown in it.

‘Don’t stop touching yourself, Felix,’ he said. ‘Don’t get distracted.’

I couldn’t make a noise, he was too far down my throat for me to manage breaths, let alone sounds. And then his other hand rested upon my neck and pushed down curiously, and my good leg bent and straightened restlessly as I jerked myself off as slowly as possible.

‘A good flame won’t hurt their shadow when they’re angry,’ Murtagh said, moving back and then thrusting forwards now, wedging back into my throat, forcing his way through so that it burned. I dragged the nails of my free hand across my belly absently, realising I’d missed this. I’d missed this a lot. ‘It was part of the reason I wouldn’t stay with you last night. Holy Lady, look how hard you are. My filthy, good boy, taking my cock this well.’

He withdrew, and I moaned, only to have it cut off with his cock once more.

After that, he found a rhythm which was slow but forceful. He pressed his cock as deep as he could and left it there, his pubic hair against my face, skin warm against me, and then withdrew and forced his way back in once more. My head was warmer than the rest of me, I felt off-balance the entire time. Between gasping for breaths when I could and stroking my cock, I realised I was getting precariously close to coming.

At one point he thrust back in so quickly that my chest heaved, and he pressed his hands down on my chest and pushed, as my free hand came up and clawed at nothing.

And then his hand was there, fingers interlacing with mine in a tight grip and he didn’t let go again.

He came down my throat a few minutes later, which was how I knew he was very aroused, because Murtagh had a slow burn with most of the things he did. But in this, he pressed deep and gripped my hand too tightly and massaged my neck firmly with his other hand and I wondered if he could feel himself there, as I grew dizzier and light-headed from being unable to breathe for so long.

When he pulled back I gasped hoarsely, the air hurt my throat and heat raced through me until I had to take my hand away from my cock, leaving my fingers shaking above it.

He’d not let go of my other hand once.

‘My good little boy,’ he said, a hint of smugness in his voice.

I shivered at his words, wanted to give him a _look,_ but he hadn’t told me I could move.

He trailed his hand from my neck down to my chest, and then thumbed at one of my nipples casually, as though he didn’t much care how I reacted. I shuddered beneath him, and slowly those thumbing strokes turned harder, rougher, and then he dug his nail in and my voice caught against the sore tissues of my throat.

When he didn’t relent, I moved the hand around my cock faster to counteract the pain, and he made a pleased sound as he leaned over me. He moved his hand to my other nipple and dug the nail straight in without stroking it first, and I couldn’t keep from whimpering. A seething heat in my belly, and he still hadn’t let go of my other hand, holding it, feeling every time my hand clenched without meaning to.

‘Get yourself close,’ he said roughly. ‘But don’t come.’

A miserable whine and I moved my hand over my length faster, paying particular attention to the head. He went back to the first sore nipple and scratched his nails over it, one after the other, and I remembered the time I told him that I didn’t like pain for the sake of it. I didn’t, but like this it picked me apart and my legs were beginning to shake.

‘Closer than that, Felix,’ he said, as my hand slowed down. ‘Come on, pretend it’s my hand, you know how close I like you to get before I don’t let you come, little rabbit.’

I panted roughly as he abused my nipples with pinches, scratches, pushing them back into my chest and then flicking at them. Coiling tension in my pelvis and in my cock, and I ground my teeth together as my balls began to draw up, and then hated having to tear my hand away from myself, my cock bobbing in the air desperate for any attention while I twisted beneath his cruel hand, crying out.

‘Again, darling,’ he said. ‘Edge yourself for me.’

‘Please, Sir,’ I said. I didn’t want to be the one to do this. I was far weaker than he was. If he was doing it to me, I could keep my hands to myself. If I had to touch myself for him, knowing his eyes were on me, his hands, his body near mine, I wouldn’t be able to resist the lure of the pleasure I wanted.

‘I’m being so gentle with you, and you’re still questioning me?’ he said, his tone colder than before.

My hand went back to my cock and he laughed darkly.

‘Well done, Felix,’ he said, as I sucked down a huge breath only to lose it when he took my nipple up in a grip so cruel I nearly squeaked.

His words turned cruelly goading as I stroked my cock for him, faster and harder until my head was tossing and I wanted to come so badly, and then he slapped my hand away sooner than I would have done it, and my hips quivered as I resisted the urge to turn into the bed and rut until I spilled.

‘Get onto the bed properly, face up, head on the pillows. Make sure you’re comfortable,’ he said, moving away to his bag. I rushed to obey him, even as my hands shook with the need to touch myself, to complete what we’d started. ‘I had something I wanted to try last time, and realised I still had them with me, so we’ll see how we go with this tonight.’

He drew a small black case out of his bag and my first hazy thought was that it was a case of aphrodisiacs. But then he got onto the bed beside me and opened the case, revealing straight metal rods that were all cylindrical. They were narrow, varying thicknesses, some with little balls along them. I stared in confusion, and then looked at Murtagh.

‘You didn’t think I’d be interested in something like this?’ he said, lifting his eyebrows.

I realised with some chagrin that I didn’t know what he intended at all. They looked entirely unsatisfactory if they were meant to be going up my ass. And as Murtagh took in my confusion, his own eyes widened in amazement.

‘You don’t know what these are?’ he said, staring at me.

I shook my head slowly.

‘Holy Lady, I didn’t think there’d be anything in this world you weren’t familiar with.’

‘Neither did I, Sir,’ I said, as he picked up one of the slender rods and weighed it in his fingers.

Then, as I watched, he shifted it until it was upright alongside my cock, not touching it. Murtagh stared at me, I stared back at him, and then suddenly I realised what the metal rod was for and my eyes flew open in shock.

‘That’s more like it,’ he said, smiling at me.

‘But…’ I said, staring at the metal.

How had Malkar never known about _this?_ I felt abruptly queasy. If he’d known of it, he would have used it to rip me open from the inside and forced me to enjoy it throughout. And of course some men had tried to shove their little fingers into my cock over the years, especially when I was younger and my cock wasn’t fully developed, and they’d watched me cry over it with delight. That was just good business, those ones generally paid better and Lorenzo liked them.

‘Okay,’ Murtagh said, resting the metal on my pelvis even as my muscles twitched in revulsion. He moved closer to me, up to my face, and placed a steadying hand on my chest. ‘Don’t like the idea of it?’

I stared at him and he waited, and then tapped my sternum with one finger.

‘I need answers, Felix. Real words, please.’

‘No, Sir,’ I said, goosebumps all over my body at the thought. He had so many of them. Some far too wide for anyone to take, weren’t they?

How didn’t Malkar _know?_

But Malkar hadn’t known about that blindfold with its little metal needles either, and Murtagh had pressed that against my closed eyes like it was nothing. Even if he said it wasn’t part of his normal practice, it was clearly still something people in Corambis used. For the first time I considered that maybe they needed places like the Copse, if that was how they manifested their sadism.

‘I’m not going to injure you,’ Murtagh said, ‘and I happen to be _very_ good at this. You’ll be safe the whole time, though you may feel a bit uncomfortable. It won’t be anything like the pain I’ve asked you to endure in the past.’

‘You’re giving me a choice?’ I said, staring at him in confusion.

‘No,’ he said. I swallowed weakly. My throat hurt, my cock was flagging. The orgasm I’d sorely wanted felt like an impossibility now.

‘But,’ he said, ‘I can tell you’re more unsettled than usual. I’m going to be very careful, and I’ll take it slow. I’m not going to lie to you, the idea of doing something to you that you didn’t know existed until this moment is very appealing.’

‘But…’

I didn’t have anything else to say. He clearly didn’t think he was going to tear me up inside, despite my fears. I had no idea what ‘a bit uncomfortable’ meant, but I didn’t think he was lying to me about that either.

Yet I was afraid.

I looked at him, and he stared back at me. ‘You told me that you were my shadow,’ he said. ‘Then extend me some trust, as your flame. That is the bond between us. Meet your fear _with_ me, and trust that I can transform it.’

‘Is it a coincidence that you’re doing this tonight, Sir?’ I said, my voice was shaking. ‘Before tomorrow? Is it that you don’t want me to be able to-’

A hand over my mouth, and he looked sad. ‘No, Felix. I wouldn’t use this against you. If I didn’t want you functional tomorrow, I’d get Wyatt to sabotage the brougham. I’d send him ahead to shut the Sanatorium down. I take being a flame very seriously, I’m not about to compromise that, or what we have between us. Do you believe me?’

Eventually, I nodded. I believed it about as much as I could believe anything.

‘I need you to lie down now,’ he said, as I’d propped myself up on my elbows when I realised what the metal rods were for. ‘I’m going to fetch a blindfold. As much as I want you to watch what’s happening… Not today, perhaps.’

He tapped my chest twice and then got off the bed. He left the metal rod on my pelvis, and I felt it there, already warm against my skin. I watched him, biting the inside of my lip. I thought of my training. I thought of how I was supposed to lie there restful and eager with sultry eyes and loose fingers and limbs, and I thought of how Murtagh didn’t expect me to perform for him. He didn’t even seem to want it.

When he came back with the blindfold, I could feel my racing heart through my whole chest. And his expression was fond, but also formidable.

‘Oh, Felix,’ he said warmly, as he slid the blindfold over my eyes and my arm jerked. ‘I do like getting in your head and that’s terribly unfair on you, isn’t it?’

He shifted, and I startled at the kiss on my forehead. It was followed by a gentle kiss at my mouth that lingered long enough that I couldn’t help but open my lips to him. He licked inside, and while I couldn’t give up my tension, it mollified me. He didn’t kiss like someone who wanted to punish me, he kissed like someone who enjoyed my mouth, my responses, _me._

‘Good boy,’ he said against my lips. ‘I’ll be keeping an eye on you, don’t worry.’

I grimaced, that was part of the problem.

He shifted a little and stroked my belly and flank with one hand, while he moved the metal rod off my pelvis. I heard him moving, the sound of a jar clinking. And then his hand was at my now soft penis, holding it in place.

‘Sir, I don’t…’ My voice strangled in my aching throat, and Murtagh went still. I could tell he was considering the situation. It was rare that I voiced dissent, but he also never really allowed it. I remembered the very first time, when he’d pulled my head towards his cock at the Althammara and I’d balked, and he’d acknowledged my fear, but also chastised me for denying him. But he’d also been nothing like Malkar after that, and I could have fallen in love with him that very evening for it, if I hadn’t been so worried about getting paid, and Mildmay.

‘I’m sorry, Sir,’ I said weakly.

‘I can tell. Give me ten minutes of your trust, little rabbit. I know it doesn’t come easily to you.’ The fingers around my penis shifted until he could stroke my pelvis in reassurance.

I nodded, it certainly didn’t. I was thinking back to that first time I’d been with him, and I’d been terrified of him, but he never misused me. He _used_ me, but in a way that I responded to as a martyr, a shadow. He was good to me from the first, when he was paying and had no reason to be. I forced myself to take as deep a breath as I could and blew it out, listening to it tremble.

I felt cold metal stroking over the head of my cock and quivered.

The smooth end of the metal rod – dripping lubricant – dipped in and out of the slit in my cock so quickly that I’d barely realised what had happened before Murtagh was moving it around the outside of the shaft instead. I frowned, and he trailed the metal back up to the slit and tested again, pushing gently, not enough to hurt or even be irritable, not even enough to really open the slit.

The metal was already warming up.

I bit my top lip and waited, and could tell that he was watching me. I wished, almost, that I’d just started screaming, but in spite of myself I realised that he wasn’t just going to stab the thing into me, and curiosity had woken alongside my dread.

More movement, and then the metal moved away and came back with more cold lubricant.

Murtagh changed his grip on the head of my cock with his other hand, I felt him squeezing the slit open, and then the metal rod dipped in again, smooth and warm behind the lubricant. I was breathing quickly, shallowly, and my hands were as clenched as they could be.

And then Murtagh let the rod settle and I felt when he was using pressure against the slight resistance of my body, and I was shaking, and the metal rod slipped _into_ me. I whimpered at the sensation, disconcerting and new and different, but it didn’t hurt. I kept waiting for the blaze of pain, but at most it was just…uneasy. Different.

I fell back towards the pillows, not realising that I’d tensed so much I’d levered myself up in the first place.

‘That’s it,’ Murtagh said. ‘Different, but not whatever you’re expecting.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ I breathed.

The metal rod was still inside me. I could tell it wasn’t much. But I was acutely aware of it, and he withdrew it slightly and I made an undignified squeaking sound that I immediately flushed over. Then he pushed it back in, further, and I could tell that nothing that size was ever supposed to go down there in the first place, resistance and discomfort and a stretching strangeness. A strangled sound in the back of my throat.

‘You’re to tell me if you feel any pain, understand?’ Murtagh said.

I nodded.

‘Words, Felix.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ I said.

He pushed the metal gently, twisting it to distribute the lubricant, and I shook my head and decided that this was insanity and how did Corambins even think of this in the first place? Did they have that much time on their hands?

And then he made a sound of satisfaction to himself and it felt so deep already, and not necessarily terrible, but I couldn’t tell if it was good, and I had a vision of that metal cylinder up amongst my organs and swallowed thickly.

Then he let the sound go, and it dropped of its own volition, and I could feel it sinking like my body wanted to suck it inside of itself completely.

I panicked.

‘No,’ I whispered, pushing up. ‘No, no, no, no.’

‘Felix,’ Murtagh said quickly, because I was moving my hands to my cock, shifting, and then he was half over me and pushing me back down and crooning my name in his sweetest voice. I was startled to hear myself sob in response. But he was unmaking me, and he didn’t understand. ‘Felix, Felix, it’s not hurting you, darling. Is it that painful?’

I shook my head, and he had one hand on the metal rod, keeping it in place, and one hand up by my chest, rubbing firmly.

‘Is it scary?’ he said.

I nodded, my face screwing up as I turned away.

‘Oh, sweetheart,’ he said, leaning up and placing his forehead against the side of my face, and I was as undone by his gentleness as what he was doing. I’d seen so many different sides of him as a flame, and I no longer saw his gentleness as weakness. He _knew_ what he was doing in a way that I couldn’t understand. ‘I want some of that fear, but this much is too much. Take some deep breaths and think about what’s happening. This is safe, and I’m not hurting you.’

‘It feels strange, Sir,’ I said.

‘It’s meant to,’ Murtagh said. ‘Sounding is challenging for some men – though not all – because it messes with the idea that something that they should only ever use for giving: pissing, coming, fucking, is being _fucked.’_

Murtagh said the last word right against my ear in a low voice, and twisted the metal rod at the same time. It felt like electricity, and I groaned brokenly and thought I was perhaps not going to survive this at all. I forced myself to take deep breaths like he’d asked, and I was still here, still in the room, not in agony, and the metal was as hot as my own body and somehow stretching my cock and _inside_ it and the idea of it alone was overwhelming.

‘Sir, you’ve done this…before?’ I said, desperate for his voice.

‘Many times, and with sounds much thicker than this, little rabbit. And I’ve never harmed a soul. Tell me what you’re afraid of, if it’s not hurting you?’

‘It… What if it disappears inside, or you can’t- Or-’

My voice was so much higher and feathery than usual.

‘It can’t do that,’ Murtagh said. ‘There’s a ball on the end that means it can’t disappear inside of you. Much like the flare on the base of a plug. There’s no way that could happen.’

I nodded, and he nodded against me like an echo.

‘I’m going to let it drop again. Your body is doing this, Felix, it’s going to be fine.’

He let go of the sound and it began to be sucked down again and I whimpered, but didn’t push up, didn’t immediately panic. Murtagh shifted back to the sound, but I wanted him near me, talking to me, and yet I couldn’t stop paying attention to the sensations he was stirring.

The sound came to natural stop inside me, and he left it there only for a minute before raising it up, this time pulling back against my body trying to draw it in. I heaved out a breath and placed my hands over my face.

And then he let it drop back into me, and the sensation was maddening.

‘There we are,’ Murtagh said. ‘That’s more like it. Overwhelmed, but not terrified, that’s the sweet spot. I think we’ve found it, don’t you?’

I mumbled a string of syllables and then pressed my hands to my chest as he raised the sound and let it drop back into me again.

‘Like this,’ he said in a low voice, ‘I can fuck every part of you. Even your cock is mine.’

_Fuck._

He continued to slowly fuck me with the sound for long minutes, and discomfort gave way to heat and a feeling unlike anything I’d ever experienced. And he sometimes ran his fingers over the outside of my cock, teasing or rubbing or even stroking, and when he squeezed so that my cock compressed around the sound, I cried out. He twisted the sound after that, one direction, then another, then back the other way.

I felt a sensation like he was squeezing my cock even when he wasn’t, and then realised I was getting hard and panicked all over again.

‘It’s fine,’ Murtagh said, laughing like I was being silly. ‘Felix, by the Holy Lady, it’s _fine._ Goodness me, this isn’t like you at all.’

I made a face, felt ashamed, but his other hand was there and rubbing my belly and rubbing circles into my chest and then stroking some of my hair away from my face.

‘Do you want to hear a secret?’ Murtagh said.

I nodded automatically, even as my hardening cock tightened around the sound and made the stretch feel more acute. Though it never did trip over into pain, it still wasn’t exactly comfortable.

‘This isn’t as deep as I can go with it,’ Murtagh said. ‘One of the benefits of sounding is access to the prostate through the base of your cock. Its feels quite mind-blowing. But I don’t think we’re going to get there today, you might not survive it, little rabbit. Perhaps next time.’

I whimpered. _Next time._

He pulled the sound back up and I could feel the way my cock was grabbing onto it now, and then he pushed down and I moaned, because it was still my cock, it was still a form of stroking, just from the inside. It was still sparks and heat and stimulation and my mouth opened when I realised that it was like taking my cock in my own hand except… _inside._

_‘Fuck,’_ I sobbed.

He continued to move it, and then I was shaking for an entirely different reason. When he squeezed his hand around the outside of my cock and jacked it slowly, I clawed at the bed.

‘Ask me to fuck you with the sound, little rabbit,’ Murtagh said, and I could hear the grin in his voice, even as my mind pooled into uselessness. I felt him draw the sound all the way up out of me and squirmed on the bed. When he pressed it back against my slit, I could feel fresh lubricant. ‘Ask me, Felix.’

‘Please, Sir,’ I breathed, dazed and torn between not wanting that sinister slide back in me and needing it because it was different and it was Murtagh doing it and he’d found another way to take me. ‘Please, Sir. Please fuck me with it.’

‘If you say so,’ Murtagh said.

He pushed the sound back in. There was that initial resistance and I winced. It never hurt, but that was uncomfortable, and then it reached the part of my cock where my body just drew it down. That almost-quick slide was terrifying still, but it felt good. So help me, it felt _good._ I felt pressure from within, and then Murtagh’s hand jacking me off carefully from the outside, and he was moving the sound, up and down, not roughly, not quickly, but even those slow movements were devastating.

Within a minute I was gasping, the heels of my hands pushing down into the bed, toes splaying, and he didn’t stop.

‘Don’t come, Felix,’ he said.

I made a sound of despair. I didn’t even want to come while it was inside of me. But I needed to come, and my lower body was tense as I fought the urge to thrust up into the sound, to meet those steady, downward pushes as Murtagh picked up speed.

‘All right, one more time,’ Murtagh said, pulling it all the way out, and then pushing it back in.

I clapped a hand over my mouth as I cried out, only distantly aware that we were in a small inn and they’d probably heard me already but they were definitely going to hear me shouting.

He ramped me up expertly, and when I was certain I was going to come, he withdrew the sound all the way out of me and stopped jacking my cock and I felt my arousal like a gut punch, an ache from my balls up into my organs.

‘Two more times,’ he said, ‘and I’ll be happy.’

I wanted to beg him not to, nearly did, but he was merciless when he edged me and I suspected pleading with him to have some pity would make him worse. He was, after all, still a flame.

When my arousal had barely banked, he slid the sound back into me and I tossed my head as he did everything that he’d done before, building me back up towards orgasm and laughing when I begged him to let me come.

‘I said twice, Felix. This isn’t the second time.’

When he stopped that time, my eyes burned and then welled over, wetting the blindfold. I was far too overstimulated to be coherent, and he trailed spiral shapes and circles over my body with his hand as I breathed roughly and he talked about something to do with sounding and I only cared about my own arousal and the fact that this would be the second time and I needed to come so badly that the only thing that stopped me from taking myself in hand was the fact that I wanted to serve _him._

The second time and he didn’t let me come when I expected it. I sobbed roughly and had to be pushed forcefully back into the bed and he caught my wrist in his hand and held it firmly. I’d tried to touch myself anyway.

‘Yes,’ Murtagh purred, ‘I definitely think we can try the next size up one day. Holy Lady, Felix, you should see yourself. But I didn’t say one more time and then I’d let you come. I said _two_ more times. Is it so difficult?’

He let go of my wrist, which fell limply back to the bed, and then lowered his hand between us and pressed the heel of it into my pelvis where my muscles and arousal had tied up into knots. I shrieked, and he groaned like I was touching him instead, and thumbed at the skin above my cock and then pushed into my pelvis again and I felt that sharp, stabbing pain-pleasure all the way through me, my hips jerking.

I was begging him all over again, and he took my mouth with his, licked up all of my words, and my world turned into a blur of too much sensation and needing to come. Behind that welled the distant urge to piss after he’d pushed his hand into my bladder so many times I couldn’t tell the difference between sharp arousal and needing to go to the bathroom.

‘Here we go, let’s send you off properly,’ Murtagh said. ‘This will be a good one, Felix, trust me.’

The sound – cold lubricant all over again – slid back into me, dropped deeper, and I craved it now. Needed that strange, invasive sensation that made my cock throb with need. And he wrapped sure, thick fingers around me and jacked me off slowly, but with more pressure than before. It ached now, and I knew I was only a couple of minutes from coming and tried to indicate it but couldn’t even speak.

There was a moment, a few seconds, where he pushed the sound even deeper than it had gone before, and spots of dizzy pleasure and discomfort and want bloomed behind my eyelids. A strangled gasp in my throat, and he was pulling the sound free completely and jacking me off with speed, deep milking strokes that forced lubricant to ooze back out of the head of my cock, and I was lost to it.

I came within a minute, hips arching up sharply as he pressed me down, that hand at my pelvis pushing in, making everything sharper, heavier, so that my release obliterated every last thought left in my head. It felt like I came far harder than normal, even with him, and Murtagh continued to move his hand over my cock, drawing out come and lubricant until I was too sensitive and keening. He murmured that I only had to stand it for ‘a little longer’ and then I was sobbing, overworked and needy and ruined.

When he stopped, I reached for him without thinking, both of my arms coming up like I could grasp him even though I didn’t think I could sit. And he was there, leaning over me and one strong arm slid beneath my lower back and one slid behind my shoulders and neck and he crushed me to him. His body was a furnace of heat, and his arms were strong and I made undignified noises into his neck and shuddered and he didn’t let me go.

He didn’t let me go.

‘You’re so brave, darling,’ he said. ‘You’re so brave, and so strong. I’m so proud of you. So proud.’

I cried harder, then a second later started giggling at myself and how overwrought I was, and he still didn’t let me go.

In that moment, I loved him so much it was incandescent.

*

It was only a small time later that he removed the blindfold and helped me into the bathroom – for I was coltish and uncertain on my legs – so that I could piss. I groaned at the ache, much of which I knew was from edging and that pressure against my pelvis alone. There was a very faint sting within my penis, but it was so mild that I knew I’d probably not notice it in a day or two. Murtagh didn’t leave my side, and when I went to shake off, he gently brushed my hand away and did it for me as I flushed all over again, before he wrapped me up in the blanket he’d taken from the closet.

He dragged me into him and I sagged, and he folded his arms around me again for a time before leading me back to bed.

I saw the sounds on the blanket and laughed.

‘What is wrong with you Corambins? Is it something in the water, Sir?’

His laugh was so bright that it was almost like the sun. ‘We’re all perverts. Welcome to Corambis.’

‘You don’t think me a coward, Sir?’ I said. I was surprised by my words. That wasn’t the kind of thing I asked anyone.

‘I called you brave, little rabbit, and I am not in the habit of calling cowards brave.’ Murtagh looked at me fondly, and then yanked the covers back and pushed me into the bed. ‘How’s your calf?’

‘Better than last night, Sir,’ I said. No stairs at this inn, and the bath, and the massage had helped.

‘Good. I’m going to look it over as you sleep.’

‘What?’ I said, staring at him.

‘Go on, lie down. I just want to make sure what we did won’t lock it up again.’

‘But you need-’

‘Felix, I am your flame, and I’m telling you what I’m going to do. You should only have one response.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ I said, and then as I fell towards the warm spot of our bodies on the bed, I realised I was desperately tired.

He moved the blankets until they covered me, but kept my calf exposed. His hands wrapped around it, stroking me a few times, before checking the muscles. I yawned hugely, my eyes already closed, my breathing slowing. I was grateful as I remembered that he said that he expected to be checking my leg while I was asleep.

So I slept.

*

My leg didn’t cramp, though it was still sore in the morning. We woke early, all of us, and Murtagh had lost some of his calm dominance from the night before and I could tell now that he was nervous, even afraid. Well, so was I. Murtagh was a wonderful distraction from St. Vanhalie, but the fact was I’d been trying my hardest not to remember any of my time in St. Crellifer’s and failing increasingly.

Before we left, I hesitated at the door, placing a hand on his arm.

‘Whatever happens,’ I said. ‘I’m doing this to help.’

‘Trust me, Felix, it is only that which has kept me by your side in the first place. But… Lady help me, you don’t understand.’

‘You could tell me.’

‘No,’ Murtagh said gruffly. ‘No, because it won’t change anything. It won’t alter your course. If you want to know after, I’ll tell you after. I just want this over and done with.’

I stared down at him, squeezed my hand around his forearm. Even seeing him like this wasn’t going to stop me. In that moment I felt my own ruthlessness like a brand across the both of us. After the night before, I realised no matter how foolish he was, no matter the bad decisions he made, he was still essentially a good man who was trying his hardest.

I realised the morning after that I still loved him, and felt it like a strange kind of hopelessness.

It was possibly the worst time to recognise the feelings for what they were. After all, we walked to the brougham together, and our next stop was St. Vanhalie Sanatorium.


	20. Clovis Carey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Six chapters to go O.O Goodness gracious. It's weird to finally be properly dealing with certain open storylines, and tying up some stuff that has been open since the first few chapters! Thanks everyone for joining me so far as we enter the end of this beast of a story (heh), and a huge shout out to all the folks leaving kudos and commenting! <333

I read the Sibylline one last time before we set out, while Murtagh paced in the foyer and Wyatt watched the cards with open fascination. Mildmay sat by me, not liking it when I consulted the cards. My heart raced, it felt surreal to be doing this, consulting the Sibylline while my cock ached not from injury, but from being fucked by those metal rods. A part of me wanted to tip back into bed with Murtagh and lazily enjoy the rest of the morning.

I drew the Nine of Swords, the Sibyl of Swords, the Heart of Light, the Rock. The same cards as always. I was somewhat relieved that nothing had drastically changed, but I wish I knew what the Heart of Light and the Rock meant. Here, it felt like the Sibylline had learned new meanings, new symbols and I was still coming to understand Corambis and its history. The cards knew something I didn’t, and I was only going to discover if that spelled doom or not after the fact.

I packed the cards up and put them back in their box. My nerves grew and I headed out of the door, not waiting for anyone else. I needed to seem sure and determined. If anyone made the smallest attempt to talk me out of the madness I was committing myself to, I could tell it wouldn’t have taken more than a couple of sentences for me to reconsider my position.

Perhaps that was cowardice, but even being here in Wolford made me feel as though I wasn’t very far from being committed to yet another institution. If they had them here, there was nothing to stop people from throwing me in one. Knowing Murtagh’s family had done as much to his brother didn’t make me feel any safer on the matter, even as I knew that Murtagh wouldn’t do such a thing.

The carriage ride to Rinnaline was less than an hour. Even as we approached, I felt a sickening shift in the air and looked out of the window that Wyatt stared out of. The landscape rolled by and I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary in the meadows and the forests, but I felt that dark, sticky energy and knew it as noirance, and pressed my spine harder to my seat and tried not to think about it.

I could tell from the way Mildmay was looking at me that he was worried.

When we rolled up outside of the Sanatorium, I couldn’t even look out of the window for long minutes. I sensed they were all waiting for me, waiting for me to act, but I could feel the energy throbbing from the place, pressing out of it like a gigantic beast stabled inside a tiny rusted tin. It turned out it _was_ possible for a place to feel worse than St. Crellifer’s.

I turned to Murtagh, but he looked pale and clammy. He, too, refused to look out of the window. His misery rolled off him in waves, and I knew he hated this, hated to be confronted by the past and by the actions of his family, yet he had come along with me. Come with me and hadn’t made any serious attempt to talk me out of it, and looked after me the night before.

I wasn’t just doing this for myself, I was doing it for him, I was doing it for his brother.

My realisation the night before that I loved him was almost an afterthought. It wasn’t surprising, it wasn’t a shock, it was inevitable. This morning, it was nothing more than the knowledge that I wasn’t only doing it for Clovis. It was the knowledge that I wanted this over and done with, so I could make sure Murtagh was all right.

I forced myself to take a deep breath and got out of the carriage, wincing as I stretched my leg. The double gates were made of uncompromising iron. Beyond it, the grounds actually looked well-tended. They were large rolling gardens that did have some people in gowns around the place, and nurses near them, keeping an eye on them. It was immediately more freedom than what St. Crellifer’s had offered any of us.

Mercifully, they all kept their human heads, none of them turned into animals before me. I wasn’t delusional, I wasn’t hallucinating.

I hadn’t been insane for years, yet I still feared it.

The converted villa beyond it, however, looked more like St. Crellifer’s than the rest of the grounds. Painted white and cream, but faded and somewhat dilapidated. Worse, I couldn’t see it yet, but I could feel it. The noirance.

I felt the others draw up alongside me.

‘I thought this was supposed to be an advanced society,’ I said, my voice insubstantial as a feather.

I didn’t want to use Vincent Demabrien’s technique for seeing the noirance, but I knew I needed to. Pulling from what I’d learned in _The Influence of the Moon,_ I ran effortlessly through the mental exercise until the noirance – darker than night, black beyond black – appeared. A monstrosity.

I shuddered and my hand spasmed. It was everywhere. It wreathed through the windows and the doors even when they were closed. It soaked into the ground beneath the building. It radiated up through the roof into the sky.

‘Felix,’ Mildmay said.

‘The noirance,’ I said. ‘It’s like the Forest of Nauleverer all over again.’

‘ _What?’_

I didn’t even know how it was possible. The Forest of Nauleverer was a place where a great city had once stood. An automaton was built to guard the city, but instead it went berserk and killed every last citizen. Into the cursed, dark energy that remained, a great forest grew and eldritch monsters took the places of the dead, and the automaton remained. Remained for centuries, killing indiscriminately, until I defeated it.

_If I can do that, then I can do this._

I wished I had my own gods to curse by, to blaspheme against as Mildmay could, because I wanted badly to lay all of this at someone else’s feet.

No magician here knew how to deal with this.

Murtagh said nothing. I could feel him looking up at me. I wanted nothing more than to flee. Layers of memories fell on top of each other in clustered, horrific bursts. Having my head shaved bald because of the lice – even though it never stopped the lice – and being tied down on that bed and experimented on. The daily abuses piling up on each other, not from my fellow lunatics, though they weren’t always pleasant people, but from the staff. Day after day, being shoved with a booted foot, meeting the end of a cane or being poked with my own broom for not being thorough enough, while madness twisted out everything I’d ever known and turned me into nothing more than sand running through an hourglass.

I swallowed, my throat so dry that it clicked, and I strode forwards.

Perhaps the staff here were civil, but that noirance _wasn’t._ Regardless of how the energy made me feel – cloying and made of suffering and death as it was – it was something I knew how to deal with.

The others followed, accepting my leadership so effortlessly I could have burst into hysterical laughter.

*

The noirance was such that I felt like I was buzzing out of my skin even as Murtagh walked towards the main counter to talk to the absurdly good-natured woman behind the desk. Yes, it was _obviously_ different to St. Crellifer’s. The staff seemed kinder. The place seemed to offer more freedom to its residents – or prisoners – but it still stunk in the background of urine. I could still hear people yelping or screaming in the distance. I couldn’t tell how much of it was in my head, how much of it was reality, how much of it was the noirance around me.

The walk down the long corridor – clean, but what corridor in an asylum isn’t clean thanks to the abused people who are kept imprisoned within its walls – felt interminable.

Some rooms were better than others, I could sense almost no noirance from a few, but the rest…

It was as though each room imprisoned its own monstrous array of noirance. Not a Sanatorium for people, but a prison for the energies of the dead, a melange that veered dangerously close to mikkary.

Alongside my fear, grew my rage.

This was where Clovis Carey had spent his life. _Here._ As an aethereal sensitive to noirance but with no tools to deal with it, he would have been entirely at its mercy. He would have gone from the agonies of the day to day in his regular life, to something beyond bearing here.

If he wasn’t insane when Murtagh knew him, I couldn’t see how he would have preserved his mind in St. Vanhalie.

I made a noise, desperate and low in my throat. The orderly leading us to Clovis’ room turned back and looked at me, but I couldn’t acknowledge him. I couldn’t acknowledge any of them. And there I was, at the head of our small party, even the Duke of bloody Murtagh falling behind.

 _Coward,_ I thought venomously towards him. _You coward._

But he didn’t know, because like Mildmay and Wyatt, he was annemer, and he couldn’t see noirance, he couldn’t interact with it. I swallowed down the urge to laugh. Perhaps to them, it was only the mild hint of stale urine that was the worst aspect of this place.

All too soon we stopped by a door and the orderly was inserting a key into the lock. My breathing came fast and weak and I wanted to run. What was I thinking? Had I been so desperate to escape Grimglass that _this_ was my good idea? My bad leg ached, my body felt like it wasn’t even mine.

The door opened to a clean, but sparse room. The smell of urine was stronger in here, but it wasn’t a stench. The walls were green and cream, the tiles were white, and there were large hooks in the wall where one might restrain or tie someone in place. On the single bed by the corner, under a window that let in gentle light, Clovis Carey curled up in a tight ball, his hair overgrown – obviously they weren’t so worried about lice here.

The noirance here was so thick I could feel myself breathing it in, I could taste the sweet decay of it. There were _beings_ in this room. Spirits. I looked around wildly and counted five, including a young boy who stared at me like he knew I could see him.

I stepped into the room, ignoring the orderly who tried to place a hand on my forearm. I went first to Clovis, staring down at him.

‘Clovis?’ I said. My voice shook. ‘Clovis Carey?’

His clothing wasn’t threadbare, but clean and starched. They had no time to change his clothes or clean his room before we came. These things, at least, were signs of genuine care. But they’d left him with these spirits. I turned and looked at them all. Two men who looked like soldiers, a figure that flickered in flame and sobbed silently into their hands, the boy who stared at me, and an older man. All of them here. All of them tethered to Clovis, I could feel the link. They’d eaten so much of him that Clovis seemed like nothing more than a holdfast, giving them substance and an anchor point.

I knelt and moved aside the overgrown hair and Clovis reacted instantly, slamming up with his back against the wall, bright amber eyes wild and unseeing. And I thought, my heart breaking, that he looked so much like Murtagh I almost couldn’t keep my eyes on him.

Behind me, I heard Murtagh’s broken voice. _‘Holy Lady,’_ he said. ‘I didn’t know it was like _this_.’

‘He’s possessed,’ I said, staring at Clovis as my anger grew. ‘By more than one spirit. And he’s likely been possessed for decades. None of this needed to happen. He’s not _insane!’_

As I spoke, I stood and turned and glared at them all.

‘He was never insane! He’s _possessed._ Your ignorant fucking country has done this to him, make no mistake. If there’s nothing of his mind left beneath the possession, it’s on all of your heads and not his.’

‘Sir,’ said the orderly, looking at me in some alarm, ‘I assure you he’s not possessed. Spirits are not real, and ghosts are only figments of the imagination. If you feel ghosts are real, perhaps an assessment could be in order, or-’

‘Do you know who I am?’ I said, staring at him, sick with fear at how quickly he’d threatened to get me assessed with a view to having _me_ committed next. ‘Get out! What are you doing, imprisoning people for something they can’t help, that they’re vulnerable to? Are you deigning to tell me that spirits aren’t real? Truly? What’s next? Will you tell me that these don’t exist either?’

I made the signs with my fingers subtly, and the magelights twinkled above me in their green chrysanthemum shapes, at least forty of them. The orderly stared at them all in horror, and he bolted. No doubt to fetch someone higher up the chain of authority.

 _Fuck him,_ I thought viciously, turning back to Clovis. I sighed. I wasn’t going to get anything coherent from Clovis. Not at all.

‘I brought chalk,’ I said, reaching for the small satchel that Mildmay held. ‘I’ll need that.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Mildmay said.

‘What do you think?’ I said, staring at him. ‘There’s at least five beings attached to him.’

I thought Murtagh would look at me then, in horror or something like it, but he never looked away from his brother. He walked over to him and reached out with a shaking hand, taking Clovis’ in his own.

‘Clovey?’ Murtagh said.

I closed my eyes. It was so much easier to deal with this without an audience, without people I cared about. So much easier to deal with my own fantom when I’d been possessed. To deal with the lost souls in the bottom of the Mirador. It had never been easy, but it was _easier_.

Mildmay and I shared a look.

‘Clovey,’ Murtagh said, his voice so young and lost, ‘do you know who I am?’

‘He doesn’t,’ I snapped, my anger leaving no room for softness. ‘He doesn’t because you left him here so his brain and body could rot.’ 

‘Mr Harrowgate,’ Wyatt said, staring at me in reproval.

‘Yes?’ I said, staring at him coolly. ‘Do you have anything to say to me? Or are you going to let me do what I came here to do?’

I stiffened when I heard the sounds of footsteps running down the corridor towards us. And then alongside the orderly appeared a thickset man with an air of authority, tall for a Corambin, but still not as tall as Mildmay and I.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ the man said, glaring at me. Then, he noticed the Duke of Murtagh standing before his brother, his hand holding Clovis’ hand, and his entire expression changed. ‘Your Grace, what are you doing here?’

‘I came to see my brother,’ Murtagh said with a surprisingly even voice. He placed Clovis’ hand carefully down on the bed, where it rested, limp, before he straightened and walked over. ‘Chief Physician-Practicioner Bulleven, a pleasure to finally meet you in person. Perhaps if we could have a talk in the corridor?’

Bulleven was staring up at the magelights floating beneath the ceiling, his mouth agape.

‘Come along, man,’ the Duke of Murtagh said, with a voice so cavalier and bright it was a wonder compared to how he’d been only a minute ago, holding his brother’s hand and calling him by a name so sweet that my heart broke for them both. ‘You’ve seen magician-practicioners before, haven’t you?’

‘A m-magician-practicioner?’ Bulleven said shakily.

And then they were in the corridor, the Duke of Murtagh talking in a low voice to him. Wyatt left the room as well.

Mildmay walked up to me.

‘It’s bad, ain’t it?’

‘The noirance here is simply _fetid_ ,’ I said to him. ‘But they can’t be having that many people dying on the grounds, or it would be mikkary by now. Perhaps it is and I can’t tell the difference.’

I stared at the small boy, who stared up at me and refused to look away. The other spirits didn’t always seem fully present. Some edged closer to Clovis. They had all been locked up together in this room, stuck with each other, the spirits looking for some kind of release or company, and Clovis…

Clovis abandoned by an entire society that refused to consider ghosts, and so had no other alternative but to think him mad.

‘Can you do something about it?’ Mildmay said.

‘I plan to. Are you staying? You don’t have to.’

‘As long as it don’t interfere with nothing you’re about to do.’

‘Perhaps you had better wait by the doorway,’ I said, looking at the miniscule amount of tile space I had available to me.

Mildmay backed up to the doorway, and I cast one look to Clovis – he’d be useless until I could clear some of the noirance away from him – and walked up to the boy instead. The boy spirit hurriedly backed up. He was wearing many layers of clothing, including a dun brown scarf. He looked like someone had rugged him up for winter’s chill. His eyes were an unusual tawny brown. He reminded me painfully of Magnus Cordelius.

‘You’re seeing me, aren’t you?’ the boy said. ‘You’re seeing me?’

‘I am,’ I said. I didn’t care what Mildmay saw or heard. I didn’t care about any of it, at this point. The fact that the Duke of Murtagh was running interference on my behalf instead of against me, meant he at least wanted me to try and help his brother. It was something. ‘Who might you be?’

‘Mm,’ the boy said, like he didn’t want to say. ‘Do you got a lighthouse? You got a lighthouse, don’t you? Built there on the cliff. Biggest one I ever seen. I’ve seen it. I’ve been there.’

I blinked at him, and a cascade of memories followed, too fast to be processed. Reaching the lighthouse two years ago and feeling the noirance in the place. The day Mildmay and I realised there was a labyrinth beneath the lighthouse and that we would never escape them. Virtuer Grice obsessed with finding ghosts, never finding them, and presumably, never knowing how to connect with what was beneath the foundation stones of the lighthouse. The drownings out there in the sea. Murtagh telling me the story of the twins, and Harland Grice drowning, and Coty Grice living in that lighthouse for the rest of his life, searching and never finding who he sought.

One memory stood out larger than the others. Murtagh telling me that one day, after a visit to the lighthouse, Clovis was never the same again.

‘Harland?’ I said, a cold chill running frigid under my skin. ‘Harland Grice?’

‘Mister!’ the kid said in recognition, staring up at me. Then he pressed his little fists to his eyes and shook his head. ‘I just wanna go home. Or back to my brother. Either one. I keep asking but no one listens. No one listens. I’ve asked in all the ways I know.’

I stared at him, weak and unable to move. One day, Clovis Carey had gone into that lighthouse, and Harland had recognised him as someone who also had a brother. Whatever transpired that day, Harland had attached himself to Clovis, and Clovis had never been able to get rid of him. Harland who had drowned, who had died and left his brother behind, who was as terrified of being left alone as Coty Grice was terrified of never finding his brother’s ghost. I didn’t know if that was the first spirit that had soldered its soul to Clovis’, but it was the one Clovis wasn’t able to survive with his sanity intact.

No wonder. Trapped there with a twin who had lost his brother, while he slowly lost his own brother as a result of his own possession. They would have fed into each other in an endless loop. I saw it so clearly, I couldn’t be certain that Harland Grice wasn’t somehow feeding me the images himself.

Suddenly I realised what the Heart of Light in the Sibylline meant. It was the lighthouse. The _heart of light._

Perhaps that was the start of it. Grice had always been convinced there was a hub of ghosts and spirits around the lighthouse, but could never reach any of them. I couldn’t help but think of Harland there as a ghost all along, looking for his brother or trying to reach him. And one day, Harland vanished and left, because when Clovis left, Harland couldn’t go back to the lighthouse on his own.

‘Coty died,’ I said to Harland, as gently as I could manage it. ‘But I can still lead you back to him, if you like. You can be together.’

The boy moved his fists away from his eyes and nodded, then nodded again.

‘Yeah,’ he said in a small voice. ‘Yeah, please.’

‘All right,’ I said.

I began to draw a tiny labyrinth on the ground. I didn’t even know if it would work. But the theory of the thing was the same, and Harland was eager. As to the other ghosts, they would have to wait. Perhaps Clovis had picked them all up over time, or maybe they had been here waiting for him in the Sanatorium.

It took all of my concentration to fill something so small with as much power as the larger labyrinths I’d visited. By the time I was done, I realised Murtagh was there standing in the doorway as well, watching me with a grave look on his face. I faced him, grim.

‘He’s got Harland Grice with him. Others, too. But I thought you should know.’

Murtagh’s face was stricken as he looked at Clovis.

‘Can you help him?’ he said.

‘I don’t know. I can help the spirits, but it might be too late for your brother.’

Someone else would gentle their words. They’d say that they were sorry, or that they were going to do their best. But I couldn’t help but think of all the other people in this place and how many spirits were attached to them, how much of this could have been avoided if the magicians here were simply trained to recognise noirance and know what to do if they encountered spirits.

For a country so hyper-rational, they had more cases like this than I’d ever seen. Their spirits didn’t know what to do, couldn’t rest, and their magicians couldn’t lay them down into whatever world of the dead waited for them. The priests did what they could, but they couldn’t do it all alone.

To my surprise, Harland was eager to get into the small labyrinth. I told him to walk around the outer circle nine times, to imagine his link to his brother, to the goddess waiting for him. The two soldier ghosts showed an interest now too, one took a step towards the labyrinth, looking to the other as though for assurance. Their glimmering, grey faces wet with tears.

I extinguished all of the magelights bar one, and I watched Harland walk the labyrinth on his own, his face screwed up in concentration. I could feel how the magic wanted a large field, a big piece of land, but I could also feel Harland Grice’s will to reach his lost twin.

There was a time when this magic had been so challenging, when the labyrinths tempted me to other worlds. Now I stood by as an observer and realised I didn’t even need to walk the labyrinths myself anymore. Once I drew them, they held their walls firm and kept energy they needed.

Or so I hoped.

Harland walked the outer circle nine times, and then his expression changed, his eyes widening. He ran as quickly as he could through the rest of the labyrinth, his form fading as he went, and as soon as he reached the centre, he vanished with an expression of delight that I only saw for a second before it was gone.

It worked.

I leaned heavily back against the wall and watched the two soldier spirits take the labyrinth themselves. Like Harland, they walked around the circle nine times, and I suspected the numerical value added weight to the tiny labyrinth and gave it gravity. Schools of magic around the sacredness of numbers existed and Malkar found them tantalising, but I’d never had a mind for them. Still, as the ghosts walked a circle, three times three, they gave the labyrinth power.

When they reached the centre, the soldiers vanished too.

I had to talk to the last two. The older man needed some convincing before he walked the labyrinth. The figure that flickered in flames and sobbed silently felt more like a relic than anything of substance, and I grit my teeth and took its burning hand in mine and led it myself. By the seventh circuit of the outer circle, I could feel some other place calling to me and had to open my eyes and stare at Mildmay and remind myself that everything I needed, all the family I ever needed, it was right here, he was staring right at me with those wide, jade green eyes of his.

I knew he was thinking it, fearing that I might give myself over to these strange places the ghosts were seeking. But this was no Lost City of Nera. Mildmay stood right there and I wasn’t insane any longer, I was well enough to see what was right in front of me.

The last figure vanished and I stood there, physically fatigued, yet thrumming with energy.

Clovis slowly fell to his side on the bed, and I walked over to him even as Mildmay held back Murtagh as he lurched forwards. I heard them talking to each other, then raised voices directed towards me. I held my palm over Clovis’ nose and felt him breathing. I pulled back his overgrown hair so I could see him better. His eyelids were peacefully settled upon his face.

It would have been exhausting for him. More than I could ever imagine.

Yet, to my amazement, his eyes flickered open. He stared _at_ me, not past me. His amber eyes were brighter than Murtagh’s. The nose was the same, the strong eyebrows were the same, the jaw thinner, but still the same. I reached out helplessly and cupped my hand around his cheek.

‘Do you know who you are?’ I said.

His eyes searched the room, then saw Murtagh.

Murtagh shoved Mildmay away, clearly only letting himself be held back by Mildmay until that moment, and I stood hurriedly and got out of his way.

They didn’t say anything to each other. Murtagh stared at him, on his knees by Clovis’ low bed, hands on Clovis’ face, and they stared into each other’s eyes. Murtagh’s chest heaved, and I realised it was enough. The recognition between them was enough. Murtagh’s fingers trembled, he looked as much a boy as I had ever seen, and Clovis lay on the bed beneath him, staring in amazement and terror, likely not understanding what the last decades of his life had been, or who he was now.

I turned and walked out of the room and stared down the corridor, leaning against the wall, taking deep breaths. There was noirance everywhere. The likelihood that at least half of the patients here could be exorcised and assisted was high. My leg throbbed, but I still held the chalk, I could draw as many labyrinths as required.

I could do it today.

A deep breath, my head spinning, and I walked towards a room that pulsed with a particularly dense amount of noirance.

Halfway down the corridor, I had to pause and catch my breath. I heard Mildmay call my name and then there were hurried footsteps and I’d barely turned when Murtagh was there, hands at my sides.

‘What are you doing?’ he said.

‘The rest,’ I said, staring at him. Ah, was my voice shaking? Perhaps I’d been more affected than I thought. But that was only five spirits, I’d exorcised far more.

But never with a labyrinth that small. Never at a place that reminded me so severely of St. Crellifer’s. Never for someone who mattered so much to me.

Murtagh mattered, therefore Clovis mattered too.

My leg hurt more and more. I wished, stupidly, for Jashuki, Mildmay’s cane.

‘The rest of them,’ I said, trying to make my voice stronger. ‘It’s not just Clovis.’

Murtagh stared past me, his eyes widening, realising something I’d learned for myself when we arrived. I stared fixedly at his shoulder. It was a nice shoulder. Broad. I wanted to lean my forehead against it. I couldn’t, not here. Not in public.

I tried to plant my feet so that my leg would feel more supported, but instead I found myself stumbling without having quite moved, and Murtagh’s hands tightened and became an arm around my lower back.

‘You need rest,’ he said firmly, eyes narrowing.

‘I swear I’ve done far more,’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t you be tending to your brother?’

 _‘Felix,’_ Murtagh said, staring up at me.

Mildmay came up beside us both and gently knocked the side of my forearm with Jashuki. ‘Felix, you gotta sit or you’re gonna drop.’

‘There’s no inn nearby, but for the ones at Wolford,’ Wyatt said, never far away from Murtagh’s side. ‘However, there’s a room for the nurses over here that has some spare seats.’

I found myself handed over to Mildmay, who stayed by my side as I used Jashuki for support, heading towards Wyatt. I dizzily knew that I’d need the break. Especially if I planned on staying and helping the others, which I did.

‘I don’t understand why I’m so tired,’ I said, as I fell back heavily into an armchair upholstered in a lurid green with chartreuse embroidery. I ignored the look that one of the nurses was giving me. ‘I’ve done far more on far less.’

‘Yeah,’ Mildmay said. ‘I know.’

‘I’ll just…’

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I’d just take some deep breaths. That was all I needed. I tried not to think about the past, but it knocked rudely on the doors of my mind anyway. The horror of St. Crellifer’s thundering down upon me. Malkar’s curse in my body, and Malkar’s touch on my skin. Labyrinths underground, filled with mikkary until I choked on it like some stranger’s cock when I’d been a child. I wished I could walk those old memories down a labyrinth and send them on their way, but memories persisted for longer than even the most stubborn ghosts, and I had fewer tools to deal with them.


	21. Miracles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s been so long since *clenches fist* Murtagh’s perspective.
> 
> (There's only five chapters left holy shit)
> 
> A huge thanks to everyone reading / liking / commenting / enjoying this! :D

_Murtagh_

*

Perhaps the Holy Lady would forgive me for having the most profound religious experience of my life in the St Vanhalie Sanatorium, witnessing the exact moment my brother returned to me as a result of Felix’s magic.

Now I stood alone in the small church attached to the building, having walked barefoot through purifying water, kneeling and attempting to find stillness. Everything screamed in me to go back to Clovis, who was sleeping, or Felix, who was resting. But I knelt there, trying to decide how to reconcile my love for Felix with the scripture and lessons I’d been taught since I was a child. The Holy Lady frowned upon men loving men, or women loving women, or so we’d been taught.

But this was also a world that had taught me that ghosts didn’t exist, that spirits weren’t something to worry about. Even if Felix had brought them with him, I thought – at most – they were a foreign phenomenon. Perhaps in believing in them, those magicians made them real and tormented themselves.

I couldn’t see or feel the ghosts that Felix worked with. But I felt the precise second Clovis came back to me, even before his eyes opened. Felix wasn’t touching him, and Clovis’ entire body lost something all at once; a burden it had been carrying since he’d been a child. Even before he looked at me, I knew.

I took a deep breath and decided I was too old to have a crisis of faith. It was exhausting to contemplate. I didn’t want to be exhausted, I’d seen the feral glint in Felix’s eye, his determination to heal every other person in this place. And while I’d give him enough rope to do whatever he could for Clovis, I cared so little for anyone else here. They mattered so much less to me than Felix did.

Felix had stared at me afterwards like he wanted nothing more than to fall against me. I’d not considered that it would be draining for him to do such magic. I’d imagined that he’d sweep in imperiously, tell me that we were all criminals for how we’d treated my brother, and then walk out again. Nothing changed, nothing mended, just his flaring, outraged judgement.

I walked back through the holy water and dried my feet, put my shoes on, and went back down the corridors towards my brother, towards Felix.

Mildmay paced by the entry to the lounge where Felix rested. His steps were small, he leaned on his cane and stared grimly into the distance. When he saw me, he came over to me.

‘You gonna let him heal every other person here?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m certainly not.’

I had an idea about that anyway. An idea that fixed together all of my strange plans and made them brilliant. That took every seed I’d planted and showed me the garden that would result. All I needed was Felix to listen to me, to be willing to say yes.

Of course it was Felix, and there was no guarantee of either.

Mildmay hesitated, then nodded. ‘He ain’t up to it.’

‘I can tell that for myself. I didn’t know his magic could drain him like that.’

‘It don’t- _doesn’t_ , normally, but them labyrinths… There’s nothing like ‘em.’

No staff came by to check on us. I had the impression that Bulleven was having a rather hasty meeting with the other higher ups in his building about the fact that I was here, and a magician was insisting his clients were possessed by real spirits. For all that Felix clearly derided this whole building and everything it represented – which I dearly wanted to talk to him about – I could see for myself that Bulleven genuinely thought he was helping these people. He’d seen for himself that Clovis could recover, and I inwardly winced at his own likely crisis of faith that he was experiencing.

‘What you both do,’ Mildmay said flatly, staring ahead. ‘He really…he really gets something out of it.’

The tone made it a statement, not a question, and yet I could tell he was uncertain all the same. I knew instantly what he meant. What we both did together, as shadow and flame. What we took from the world and turned into treasure, between us.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He really does. But he’s been hurt badly in the past, and it takes time to…’ I pressed my lips together. ‘Physical intimacy is easy, emotional intimacy is a challenge. I suspect I don’t have to tell you that.’

‘I’ve been caught by Malkar, you don’t need to tell me nothing,’ Mildmay said, still staring ahead.

I could tell he rarely said those words to anyone. It was also the first I’d heard of the abduction, even after reading Felix’s file at The Institution. I stared at him for a long time, and eventually Mildmay looked down at me, a quick, furtive glance.

‘I didn’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. Everything I’ve learned about him indicates that he’s beyond monstrous.’

Mildmay’s gaze was haunted. He shrugged with the arm not leaning on his cane. ‘He’s dead now. But he had me for a while. Don’t remember most of it.’

‘I’m sorry all the same,’ I said. ‘Sometimes it seems like – for all that Felix has struggled with Corambis – it really is better that you’re both here.’

‘I ain’t gonna speak for Felix,’ Mildmay said, ‘but I like it. There’s free learning, all them books, and Grimglass ain’t filled with hocuses trying to backstab each other all the fucking time. At least not where I can see. Food’s better too. Women are…nicer.’

I smiled, and Mildmay’s eyes gleamed with his own smile. ‘They’re not all nicer,’ I said. ‘Clearly you’ve forgotten Isobel.’

‘Isobel’s all right,’ Mildmay said, squinting at me. But there was something playful in that green, and even though he never smiled because of his scar, I could tell he was being just as wry as I was. I made a note that Mildmay responded very well indeed to just being talked to honestly, even if he did look like he was going to kill you for it at the time. I hadn’t expected to win any favours with Mildmay, talking to him about Felix, I just wanted to be clear that he had no right to stop Felix from seeing me. But now…

I hadn’t ever expected to make something of a friend in Mildmay.

‘I didn’t know it could be like that,’ I said. I wanted to lean against the wall, I was exhausted after the last few days of travelling. Worrying myself sick every evening, whether Felix was in my bed or not. Thinking of Clovis and then trying not to think of him and then thinking of him again. Terrified of seeing my brother, because I loved him so much, because I’d left him behind. ‘A world where there are ghosts, where aethereals can be cured. It’s one thing to have an idea that it might be true, regarding Julian. I genuinely thought Clovis… We did everything we could.’

‘Would’ve thought the same thing, raised here,’ Mildmay said, leaning more heavily against his stick, its dog-like head where Mildmay’s fingers clenched peering up at me with sweet curiosity. ‘Might’ve thought the same, before Felix. Believed in ghosts but, kethe, stayed the fuck away from ‘em.’

‘Do you think…’ I said, then closed my eyes. ‘Do you think Felix would be happier if he could teach in Esmer, from time to time? Perhaps for three or six months of the year?’

Mildmay went still and I waited. Waited to see if I was wrong. I’d been wrong about Clovis. I could be wrong about this. These brothers broke with all of my previously held rules. No long term relationships with shadows, and then suddenly Felix. No believing in ghosts, and then there was Felix. Don’t fall in love with men.

Bloody Felix Harrowgate.

‘You can’t offer it to him if you’re gonna fucking take it away later,’ Mildmay said finally.

‘I don’t want to,’ I said.

‘If you fall out or get bitter, I mean then. Felix doesn’t get lovers who stay. They die or they hate him or he kills ‘em.’

I blinked, stared at Mildmay, and Mildmay eventually just sighed. ‘He killed one of ‘em. Just one. Ain’t nothing more understandable than why Felix killed Isaac Garamond. He’s not worth a rat’s ass.’

I remembered from the file, the man who had killed Felix’s lover, the man that Felix had killed in turn. And then he’d been exiled. And then he’d come to Corambis. Felix never talked about it. He’d mentioned Gideon once, very early on. He’d never mentioned Isaac at all. Never mentioned the way his previous lover had died, except to the Congress, so that they might write it down in their minutes and I would one day find my way to it on paper.

‘He doesn’t tell me much,’ I said finally, ‘about that part of his life.’

‘I mean, maybe let him have his secrets,’ Mildmay said speculatively. ‘Never got much of a chance for privacy. Powers, there ain’t no such thing as privacy when you have a Keeper like what Felix had.’

‘Do you let him keep his secrets?’ I said, arching a brow.

Mildmay squinted, then made a sound that could have been a laugh. ‘Sacred bleeding fuck, _no_ , you can’t let him keep ‘em for too long. Ain’t good for him. He’ll take anything and make it a knife or a noose. Even when he’s trying hard to make it something else. He just knows knives and nooses.’

‘But you’ve been teaching him differently,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ Mildmay said. ‘Maybe you’ve been at it too,’ he offered.

It was as good as acceptance from Mildmay. In fact, it felt like a level of approval that made me absurdly happy, standing there in the corridor, even as I worried for my brother.

‘Think he could do well in Esmer,’ Mildmay said. ‘He was happiest there. You ain’t… But you ain’t wanting him to leave Grimglass? You ain’t trying to get him to leave?’

There was a plaintive boy’s voice in those words.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t want that. He needs you. And for all that he hates it, I think he needs Grimglass. On its own, it’s not enough. But Esmer wasn’t quite the answer either. There are plenty of people in Corambis who spend half the year working one place, half the year working in another. And it might not work out. He might say no. He might hate it. He might not want to teach.’

‘You ever seen him?’ Mildmay said. ‘You ever seen him teaching?’

I shook my head.

‘Let him,’ Mildmay said finally. ‘Let him teach. You’ll see.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m going to check on Clovis.’

Mildmay nodded, an acknowledgement and a dismissal, and I walked down the corridor, my heart pounding faster and faster as I got closer to Clovis’ room.

Clovis was still asleep. I sat next to him on a chair brought in for me by one of the nurses. I carefully took Clovis’ hand in mine and I watched him sleeping, and wondered at the fact that Felix had told me it was Harland Grice. Harland Grice and others. So one day we’d gone to play in that lighthouse, and Clovis had brought Harland home with him.

‘Oh, Clovey,’ I sighed, chafing at the back of his hand with my thumb.

He didn’t wake. I wanted him to, but he didn’t. I wanted him to look at me with those clear eyes, but maybe it was better he rested. The world had betrayed him, his body was older, he almost certainly had ailments that maybe he wasn’t aware of when he was possessed. I didn’t know if he could talk. But to be able to hold his hand like this and him not twitch away like it was agony, even that was an improvement.

I stared down at him and my eyes burned with tears. I bowed down and pressed his palm to my forehead and hoped he’d forgive me.

It was all I wanted in that moment. His forgiveness.

*

Clovis woke an hour later, stirring with a small weak noise in the back of his throat. Despite his age, he reminded me so much of the child he’d been. I wondered if I was meeting an adult, or if I was meeting my brother before he was possessed, or if I was meeting the teenager who had only the rarest moments of clarity and begged for me to kill him whenever he was lucid.

‘It’s all right,’ I heard myself say, even as I rubbed my thumb over the liver spots on the back of his hand. ‘You’re in a hospital, you’re safe. It’s me, Ferrand. A young man came and removed all the ghosts that were clinging to you, five altogether, I think. Harland Grice too. Imagine that, Clovey. But of course you knew. Of course you knew. And we never understood. It’s quite something to think your country is one of the best in the world and realise we still have so much to learn. I know I’ve always lacked humility, but I genuinely thought I was open to learning new things if those things would benefit Corambis.’

I moved Clovis’ hand until it was cupped in my own. I was surprised at how strong Clovis’ fingers still were, and then imagined Clovis clenching at his bed over the decades, curling his fingers into fists, trying to escape the suffering he was experiencing. Listening to spirits and no one to listen to him.

‘This man came into my life and it’s occurred to me that he could have healed you two years ago,’ I said. ‘I could have saved you at least two years of this, couldn’t I? Maybe we were wrong to try everything Corambis had to offer, maybe the answer was to leave and take you with us. But I’m not sure every magician beyond Corambis can do what Felix can do. Should I have searched the world for him sooner? But he wouldn’t have been of sound mind if I’d found him back then, Clovey. He would have been a child at best, and you don’t know what he was living through. No one searched for a way to heal him. He had to do almost all of it on his own.’

No wonder Felix and Mildmay were so terrible at knowing what to do with support. They barely knew how to support each other. They tried their hardest, but from everything I knew, they had – for at least a significant chunk of their lives – literally nothing to rely on except for rapists, murderers and thieves at best.

‘Bulleven is surprisingly open-minded to Felix’s exorcism technique. He’s more open-minded than I am. After all these years, he’s lived in a building where these people suffer and he has actually wanted to help you and the others. He sees how deeply you’ve been sleeping since Felix worked his magic, he knows how you slept brokenly before. I’ve seen Felix’s magic and I still didn’t believe he could help you. Bulleven saw the results once and called a meeting immediately. I thought he’d come at us like a bull to a red flag, but it turns out even he’s more flexible than I am.’

I lifted Clovis’ hand carefully and pressed it to my forehead. His skin was healthy, not papery, his fingertips smoothed and unmarked. He hadn’t worked a year in his life, except for the work he’d done to fight off those spirits unsuccessfully.

‘This is why you were supposed to be the Duke of Murtagh,’ I found myself saying roughly. ‘This is why it was meant to be you. Affable and flexible and kind. I had to learn the last two. I was always at my most cheerful on a battlefield. Possessing the courage to kill is not the courage to grow or to learn or to be kind.’

Clovis’ hand twitched and moved in mine. My eyes widened, but I didn’t dare move. I sat there, paralysed, as fingertips brushed against my forehead. I kept cupping his wrist and the base of his palm, because I could feel how weak he was, how frail. But those fingertips still trailed across my forehead.

‘ _Ferry_ ,’ he breathed, the syllables clumsy and his tongue unused to talking. 

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even take the Holy Lady’s name in vain. I couldn’t do a thing except lift my head and stare at him. His eyes stared back into mine. He didn’t look through me or past me or at something else. He stared at me.

He squinted at me, and I hoped he recognised me. I thought he did.

‘… _Old,’_ he said.

I laughed in spite of myself, laughed despite the tears flowing down my face. ‘You don’t look much better yourself, old man.’

Clovis’ eyes creased in confusion, and then his expression cleared and he just stared at me. His hand was lax in mine, like he’d used up all of his strength.

I was going to have to find a team of physician-practicioners and magician-practicioners to care for him. Or perhaps Bulleven would know what to recommend. Clovis would need his physical strength. He’d need to learn so much about the world and himself. It would be gruelling.

‘Oh, Clovey,’ I said.

He just watched me. Watched me like it was the only thing he wanted to do. And then minutes later, he fell into a deep sleep once more.

I pressed his hand hard against my forehead and cried.

*

Afterwards, I went out intending to seek Bulleven, and instead saw Felix limping down the corridor with a look of grim determination on his face, and Mildmay standing in the doorway some distance away, looking like he was going to launch straight after him.

I was closer, and walked over swiftly, grabbing Felix by the arm.

‘What are you doing?’ I said. His limp was worse than normal.

‘The others need help,’ Felix said, staring at me. ‘What did you think I was going to do?’

‘Felix,’ I said, and then moved so that I could grasp both of his arms and face him.

‘Have you been crying?’ Felix said, his eyes widening as he looked down at me. ‘Is something wrong with Clovis?’

‘No, everything’s right with Clovis,’ I said, my fingers tightening on his arms. ‘Felix, I _know_ you want nothing more than to heal all of these people. I know. Believe me. But there are other Sanatoriums. Other people. There are thousands of aethereals in Corambis and what was once Caloxa. Maybe tens of thousands. Are you going to go to them all?’

‘Of course. If I have to,’ he said imperiously.

I believed he would. I could see that he would go to his grave healing all of those people. I’d always known Felix could be generous, but in that moment I realised how much of that generosity he concealed from others, how much of his heart he hid in order to protect himself.

‘You can’t,’ I said. ‘It’s too much, Felix.’

‘It’s not,’ he said, and I pressed my lips together, thinking swiftly.

‘But what if you could teach it?’

He stared at me in shock.

‘What if I could get you a position for half a year or less – however long you want – at Esmer, working at The Institution under the auspices of the Congress? What if you focused solely on teaching this? A new field of study with practical exercises to Sanatoriums or similar, to test the techniques. What then, Felix? Would you do it?’

That gaze was so dumbstruck it was almost empty.

‘Felix,’ I said urgently. ‘What if you had the blessing of John Ashmead already? Would you still be willing to do it, even if it was the Women’s Thaumaturgical College? Would you teach it to every magician who wants to learn it, and of course you know they _will,_ if you’re the one offering the course. Would you teach us?’

‘Ferrand,’ he said, his voice uncertain. ‘What have you been doing?’

‘Damn it. I’ve been trying to find a way to get you back to Esmer for some of the year. I’ve already talked to John. He’s more than willing to try, if you are.’

‘What?’

‘I didn’t know what you’d teach. Frankly, I didn’t care, it’s really not my field of expertise. But that way- Felix, you said yourself, Grimglass isn’t your dream and it never was. Come to Esmer for some of the year. And then when the controversy gets to be too much, escape back to Grimglass, go back to your brother, enjoy Adelais’ cooking. You’d want to do it, wouldn’t you? You’d want to at least to try?’

Felix’s gaze burst with hope, and then his expression transformed to despair.

‘Ferrand, my leg… I can’t…’

‘You _can,’_ I said, shaking him a little. ‘If we hire a brougham for you and Vanessa, instead of a fiacre, you’ll have more room to stretch your leg while you travel. If you start seeing a physician-practicioner to learn the right techniques for working with that scarring, I _promise_ you it won’t be so bad in the day to day. If you take regular stops on the journey, you’ll be able to walk some of the stiffness out. Felix, trust me, they told me I wouldn’t be able to use my arm again when it was ripped apart. I’m not saying your leg will ever heal, but I’m saying it can improve. You do nothing to help it, but if you did, you’d be able to handle that trip to Esmer and back again.’

Felix arms were lax in mine. I didn’t know what I’d do if he insisted on healing everyone else in this Sanatorium, looking as exhausted and shocked as he did. I just wanted to get him into an inn and make him sleep. I didn’t even want to take him first as a flame, I just wanted to look after him as a flame needed to care for their shadow.

‘Felix,’ I said roughly. ‘Will you consider it? Will you let go of this need to heal everyone yourself – by the Holy Lady, being a martyr is _not_ a good look on you – and get some _rest?’_

Felix looked past me, his face twisting. ‘They’re suffering so much. You don’t understand.’

‘You’re right, I don’t. But you _can’t_ shoulder this on your own. You know students and experienced magician-practicioners alike would come to a course like this. Why, something that could help so many people at once? That could transform aethereals and give them tools to deal with possession? To know that we can help them beyond…beyond the meagre things we’ve tried?’

Felix closed his eyes, those pretty red lashes resting on the dark circles beneath his eyelids. I suspected he’d perhaps heal exactly one more person and then faint. I didn’t want him to take another step towards another patient in this asylum. It was incredibly selfish of me, after what he’d done for Clovis. But there were very few people I’d lay my life down for, and Felix was one of them, and that meant I cared not a whit for the rest of these people if Felix was going to suffer unduly for them.

‘Felix, for three months of the year, maybe twice a year, would you come and teach us?’

‘Yes,’ Felix said breathlessly. ‘Yes, of course I would.’

‘This year?’

‘What?’ Felix said, eyes flying open. _‘What?’_

I smiled crookedly. ‘They’re ready for you. Ashmead can circumvent the Congress’ petty issues with your ‘sordid lifestyle’ by having you teach at the Women’s Thaumaturgical College, where you are patently not a threat and they can’t protest having you there. Of course people will still protest, but Ashmead is certain that as long as people know that none of your classes are _mandatory,_ and are all voluntarily signed up for, it won’t be a problem. Ashmead has always wanted to find a way to get you back at his Institution. I don’t have power over the presses, but I _do_ have sway in the Convocation.’

I stepped closer to him, gentling my hands. I was certain I’d pressed bruises into his arms in my desperation to get him to listen to me. I rubbed over his coat, not caring who saw us.

‘Before, I was certain we could make it work; you teaching at the College. Now, knowing you can teach our magicians these techniques, I know we can make it wildly successful. Felix, do you not understand how many families you could save by teaching these techniques?’

‘It’s…it’s heretical magic,’ Felix admitted, his cheeks flushing bright red.

‘Is it?’ I said, laughing. ‘Really? You bringing Clovis back to me was heretical?’

‘It’s…’ Felix smiled weakly at me. ‘It’s not really done. Best to just not get possessed in the first place. But your aethereals are so vulnerable to it.’

‘Are there things they can do to help themselves? You taught Julian, didn’t you?’

_Holy Lady, what about Julian?_

If the attitude towards aethereals changed, I could get Julian back to Esmer one day. I was reaching too far across the Carey name and reputation to even imagine it – my late father would kill me – but every time I thought of Julian, I thought of how unhappy he was and I wanted to fix it. He’d joked about dying like it was a perfectly normal thing to joke about.

People didn’t do that unless they’d really thought about it. I knew that.

‘Yes,’ Felix said. ‘There are techniques for aethereals. Vincent DeMabrien wrote a book which included some, and though he was not entirely of sound mind, some of those techniques were useful to me when my magic was blocked. Possibly there could be more techniques. Julian was willing to try anything, and I suspect he’d be happy to experiment knowing that I could protect him.’

‘All right. So will you _rest,_ Felix? Please look at me and know I’m one step away from ordering it as your flame.’

Felix’s eyes were tired as he studied me. I thought I could see how he wavered, his determination shrinking not in front of my need to get him to take it easy, but in his awareness that he no longer had to do this on his own. He would never have accepted an order from me, if he knew he was the only one who could help these people.

‘I’ll want to go to Esmer soon, then,’ Felix said. ‘I can’t simply sit in that lighthouse knowing how many of your citizens in these places are eminently curable.’

‘Then I’ll have Wyatt organise it.’

Felix’s arms sagged in my grip. His head bowed. The true weight of exhaustion piled on top of him and I thought were it not for his own mettle, he would have simply dropped.

‘It didn’t used to do this in quite the same way,’ he said, his voice almost only air.

‘You’ve had days of travelling in moderate to severe pain,’ I said. ‘Felix, surely what the body suffers has an impact on your magic.’

Felix nodded mutely, and I realised that it was time to get him out of here. Time for all of us to go back to Rinnaline, then Wolford, and then onwards to Grimglass. I wanted to stay for several weeks with Clovis, but I couldn’t afford it. Even these few days ate into my schedule and left a mountain of work waiting for me when I returned. The world wasn’t going to stop for either of us.

Felix had stubbornly insisted on giving me a miracle, and now he was paying for it.

‘All right,’ I said, sitting easily in the core of strength that waited for me as a flame ‘Here’s what’s going to happen.’

*

That evening, in Rinnaline, Felix sank into a deep sleep immediately after bathing, and I couldn’t rouse him to eat dinner. Alarmed, thinking something was wrong, I interrupted Wyatt and Mildmay playing an unfamiliar card game with such intensity that I could about feel it crackling through the room. Soldiers who hated each other stared at each other across battlefields with less intensity than these two.

‘Is it normal for him not to wake?’ I said to Mildmay, once I’d drawn him aside.

‘You can’t use him for your shit tonight,’ Mildmay said in immediate outrage. ‘You ain’t gonna-’

‘I had _no_ plans to work him as a shadow tonight,’ I said firmly. ‘He’s not eaten. I just want to know if I should be calling a physician-practicioner or a magician-practicioner.’

Mildmay squinted at me, then his expression cleared. ‘That’s just Felix. Sometimes he’s fine, sometimes he needs to sleep after. If it’s the last, he’ll be dead to the world maybe for longer’n a day.’

I nodded, glad to hear it was somewhat normal. The idea that I might have made him irreversibly ill, or that he might have done that to himself for my brother, weighed too heavily to think about.

‘Don’t know much about hocuses,’ Mildmay volunteered, ‘but learned more about it from Felix. He’s the best. The best in the world. But, Kethe, he kills himself for it sometimes. You getting him back here tonight was the right thing. Don’t want to think about how it would’ve been if he stayed and kept going. Though, knowing him, probably just him getting possessed himself and suffering in silence about it.’

I stared at him in horror, and Mildmay gave the tiniest shrug.

‘S’what he does,’ Mildmay said.

‘He agreed to Esmer. It might be good for the both of you to talk about it.’

‘Yeah,’ Mildmay said. ‘We’ll talk. I’ll make him.’

‘And you? Are you okay? Is your leg sound?’

Mildmay’s expression twitched in a way that made me think the idea of someone asking him if his leg was sound, was perhaps amusing to him. But he nodded. He looked towards the room that Wyatt was in and I realised he wanted to get back to his card game.

After that, it was simple farewells, and I went back to Felix.

Felix Harrowgate, in my bed, face clear and untroubled. I sat beside him and turned over the lack of crisis I felt over loving him. I’d expected to be upset over it. I’d expected a severe crisis of faith for months. I’d dreaded it, wondered how I’d talk to the Intended about it, wondered how I’d pray to the Holy Lady and still feel religious myself and not like a hypocrite.

But kneeling there in the small St Vanhalie chapel back at the Sanatorium, I found I didn’t care about how society might judge me, I could not believe in a world that wouldn’t allow a love that could lead to so much good. My crisis started and ended in the moment I let myself admit that I loved him.

For his own sake, we couldn’t tell the world. For Isobel’s sake. For the Carey name, we couldn’t.

But the love itself was rich and true. I’d never considered myself one for religious argument, but I’d dare any Intended to prove to me how such a thing could be evil when it had brought my brother back to me. When it had allowed me to find myself at a time when I didn’t even realise I was still lost.


	22. Esmer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hOW do we have four chapters left? Hoo boy. This chapter has EVERYTHING. Has anyone (who read the series) missed Corbie? BECAUSE I HAVE. fdslkafjsa

_Felix_

*

Murtagh was ready to have me back in Esmer, two weeks after we visited St Vanhalie and Clovis Carey. But my leg wasn’t ready, and I realised I wasn’t ready either.

A physician-practicioner was found not in Grimglass, but in the nearby country town of Lesser Sheepton. He brought his own massage table with him, a contraption of wood and springs that folded out into a table with a soft leather covering. The man – Pecton Emmanuelle – was short in the Corambin way, wiry and looked like he’d spent almost all of his life under hard sunlight.

First he directed me to walk around my room. Then he asked me to run, at which point he made a clicking sound with his tongue at my pathetic and agonised half-jog.

‘Y’ain’t gonna be sprinting anywhere, then, are you now?’

‘I wasn’t planning to.’

‘Does it hurt all the time?’ he said.

I nodded. And he walked over to me and stood behind me, placing his hands on my lower back and hips with such familiarity I forgot to flinch. His fingers dug in, and he made a considering grunting noise.

‘Yeah, can fix some of this up. You broke summat and then broke the rest yourself trying to compensate for it. I see it all the time. We’ll get you a properly fitted walking stick to take some of the pressure off this hip here.’

Pecton dug his fingers into a place that made me hiss and jerk forwards.

‘Yep,’ he said, and I stared at him in outrage. He just looked implacably up at me, and then asked me to lift my leg until it hurt worse than usual. He didn’t seem surprised when I got it only a small way off the ground before signalling that the pain was increasing.

‘Gee up on the table, then,’ he said, ‘and get your kit off. Well, your trousers. Can’t remember the last time I did this for a human.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said, halfway through pulling my pants down.

‘Oh, did they not tell you?’ Pecton said, laughing. ‘I started off in the big city, doing this for humans. But the last twenty years I mostly see to the fancy horses. What, you think humans are the only ones that need this kind of work?’

_‘Horses?’_

‘What’d you expect? Yer in Grimglass, not blimmin’ Esmer. You know, there’s Lesser Sheepton, and Greater Sheepton, and Sheepton, and you know where I’m from? I’m from _Little_ Sheepton. Not some cosmopolitan free-for-all like Bernatha.’

His grouching reminded me of Mildmay. I got onto the table, face down as he directed, and lay there as he prodded at my calf and my ankle and then flexed my toes and dug his thumbs carefully – but with increasing pressure – into the sole of my foot. But when he started really pressing into the calf, I could tell he was disturbed by what he found by how he lingered, double or triple checking certain areas.

‘Holy Lady,’ he said. ‘Would’ve put a horse down with something like this. All right then. I’ll come up and see you twice a week for a month, and we’ll see what we’re on about after that.’

‘I’m going to Esmer soon,’ I said reflexively.

I had no real idea when I was going to Esmer, only that Virtuer Ashmead had already sent me a letter, explaining that if I arrived off the semester schedule, they could run a curriculum as an extracurricular course until my schedule matched with that of the Women’s Thaumaturgical College.

‘Y’ain’t,’ Pecton said, staring at me. ‘Not ‘til that leg’s working better.’

‘I’ll have you know I went to St Vanhalie by carriage, which is an hour or so out of Rinnaline. And recently.’

‘Bet that’s why His Grace hired me,’ Pecton said, thumping the side of the massage table. ‘Found out the hard way that your leg don’t like cross-country travel did you?’

‘Well…yes,’ I muttered into the table, slumping.

Pecton grunted, then bent my leg carefully at the joint and started rotating the ankle in small circles. I hissed, and then tried to swallow down the rest of my response. There was enough pain in that movement, I suspected large circles were going to be excruciating.

‘Respectfully, Esmer can wait until you got your walking stick, and you got some more flexibility. It can wait a month, can’t it?’

Could it? Could all those people suffering in the asylums wait?

But I’d waited two years already, hadn’t I? And going to Esmer never seemed quite real, as though it was a dream I’d imagined in some desperation to find a middle ground between my life before, my life now. Sometimes it seemed like I’d hallucinated Murtagh’s hands on my arms, staring at me intensely, throwing out his plan for me in a way that would have made me furious were it not for the fact that it was all what I desperately wanted and knew no way to get for myself.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose it can.’

*

Pecton came three times a week in the first two weeks. He said he didn’t trust me not falling back into old habits. He forced me to relearn how to walk. I had exercises to do multiple times a day even when he wasn’t there. They were frustrating and slow, and the progress I was supposed to be making was miniscule. Sometimes it felt like the pain was getting worse, not better, and when I accused him of being a charlatan, he’d stared at me and stated that I was using muscles I hadn’t bothered using in years, and it showed.

But the improvements came. While my whole body from my lower back down was in a constant state of low-grade pain, the muscles no longer felt uselessly tense. Sometimes when I sat, my leg felt as though it was actually relaxing, not locked up like always. Pecton had given me a bitter salt to mix with water, and I had to drink that once a day. I also had to soak in the bath every night, running through several stretches while I did.

I had far less time to be working on Grice’s notes at all hours, and a good chunk of my day was concerned with my leg, instead. Pecton noticed Mildmay and his thigh, and it only took a week of his brusque Sheepton ways to wear down Mildmay. And now we were both stuck with more exercises than we knew what to do with, and a physician-practicioner who clearly preferred the company of horses to that of people.

I think the only person he truly liked in the lighthouse was Walsh.

‘You reckon they’re all like that in Sheepton?’ Mildmay said one night, as I ate some stewed fish that Adelais had made before swanning off back into the city on Langonec to talk to ‘…The milkmaid, you know the one, you’ve seen her, how have you _not_ seen her? Holy Lady, do you just not _see_ women? Don’t answer that.’

‘Little Sheepton,’ I said, arching an eyebrow.

‘Powers and saints, _Little_ Sheepton, because fuck us if we ever just say he came from Sheepton, right?’

I smiled. I’d made that mistake only once.

‘So you’re gonna do it?’ Mildmay said. ‘You gonna go to Esmer?’

‘Do you think I should?’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ Mildmay said. ‘S’long as you come back.’

‘I don’t think you need to worry about that,’ I said. Mildmay looked at me in surprise. ‘Despite how it must seem sometimes.’

‘But you and cities are like Adelais and that damned horse.’

I almost laughed. ‘I used to think so. But…’

‘But what?’ Mildmay said, frowning at me.

‘It’s only that Malkar never taught me to want anything different,’ I said eventually, looking towards the kitchen where braces of herbs were drying by the window, the lace blocking out the sharpness of the light. ‘Being a wizard, being in the Mirador, it was everything I admired as a child, and it was everything he trained me to need. By the time I got there, I didn’t understand anything else. And after- After everything…’

I’d been about to say after Gideon, but I still couldn’t say his name without something in my chest breaking into sharp, infectious pieces.

‘Leaving the Mirador like we did, I thought my life was over,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know how not to want a city, until it was against the law for me to return to the one I loved with all my heart.’

Mildmay was pensive for a time, I didn’t even know if he’d respond to me. I was about to call it a night, when he placed his hand near mine where it rested on the table. He still didn’t touch me. I didn’t think he ever would, without asking me first. Even when I ached for his body, lusted after him, I still never responded well to being touched outside of sex until I’d met Murtagh.

But seeing his hand close to mine, I could feel his callouses on the back of my hand, like he was touching me all the same.

‘You really don’t want it no more? If we could go back, would you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Go back to what? Watching you suffer on those stairs if you came back with me? Understanding that there is barbarism baked into the very stones of the Mirador, and no way to escape it? Should I go back crippled, knowing how those wizards in the upper echelons respond to any perceived flaws at all? Even Esmer is its own challenge, and Esmer has always been far kinder to me than the Mirador.’

‘You’re gonna help all them people. All them aethereals.’

‘If I get it right the first time,’ I said quietly, ‘Corambis will figure out how to do it for herself.’

‘You never really wanted the fame, did you? Just the notoriety.’

A word that Mildmay wouldn’t have known, back in the Mirador. Back when no one would have helped him to learn to read, and everyone – myself included – was concerned with keeping him locked up in the smallest little box.

‘I don’t want fame. But I understand notoriety,’ I said. ‘I even understand it here.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Mildmay said.

‘But I’ll want to get away from it,’ I said firmly. ‘I don’t want it all the time. I want to come back.’

Mildmay looked doubtful, and I realised I couldn’t reassure him until I returned from my first visit.

I was afraid too. What if I didn’t want to come back? What if I realised that Grimglass was a prison after all? Nothing better than a once-haunted lighthouse, and a cliff to throw myself over?

But I was determined to wait until I returned from my first visit, to decide what I truly thought of Grimglass.

*

The walking stick that was made for me, was measured specifically for my height and the length of my arm and leg, and was carved from a wood as red as my hair. I stared at it in shock, but the carpenter assured me that His Grace the Duke of Murtagh had paid for it, and the wood was the finest that Corambis had to offer. Unlike Mildmay’s endearing Jashuki, with its strange but friendly face, the handle on my cane was simple, designed to carry my weight, decorated only with a small flourish of curlicues that matched the tattoos on my forearm.

It was a level of detail I hadn’t expected. It made me realise all over again how people paid attention even when I didn’t notice they were. They’d noticed not to insult me this time, but to craft something designed to complement my tattooed forearms and hands, my hair, to fit whatever ensemble I decided to wear.

It was the finest thing I’d owned since the Mirador, outside of my rings – which I rarely wore now – and Shannon’s mother’s necklace, that he’d given to me when I left Melusine in exile.

Despite the cane’s usefulness, it took some time to get used to. There were times I chose the higher amounts of pain and instability, over the inconvenience of no longer having both hands free.

And, of course, Pecton gave me yet more exercises to do, to compensate for the way the walking stick changed my gait. From what I understood from his short, clipped, annoyed sentences, anything that altered a person’s natural gait would cause them issues, whether it was a limp or a walking stick. But he assured me that once I knew the correct exercises and used them, the benefits would outweigh the costs.

The pain was still there, but it didn’t claw at me in the same way. As its monstrous grip eased to something lesser, I realised how much my entire mien had been altered by that pain. And I mourned for the fact that I would never rediscover the state of mind I had before this pain. Because the pain itself would never leave me, the wound could be eased, but not cured. I mourned too for the person Mildmay was before his leg injury, and I wondered if the scar across his face had been hurting him all his life. Perhaps he’d grown used to it. But I knew now that it was a terrible thing to become used to.

I spent a whole evening going through my wardrobe, dissatisfied with everything I owned. I took my rings out of the drawer, ten of gold and garnet, patterned after the rings of Idomeneos, the Celebrant Celestian who founded the Gardens of Nephele, the place where I was healed from my insanity and Malkar’s curse. I slipped them onto my fingers. Each ring was as long as the whole first finger joint, and I felt my magic settle and concentrate in upon itself once I had all ten there.

It was tempting to keep them on, but in the end I took them off and put them back in their pouch. I’d take them with me to Esmer.

*

Two months after the events of St Vanhalie, I sat in a brougham opposite Vanessa, who was dressed for high society in Esmer. It was not at all like the practical clothing she normally wore in Grimglass. Vanessa’s maid, Woodlock, sat next to her. Woodlock was typically quiet-spoken, but she stared between us with a light in her eyes, perhaps excited to be returning to Esmer. The whole brougham smelled of lilies, due to Vanessa’s strong perfume.

I had my entire seat free and was instructed to use it to stretch my leg as necessary. The brougham driver had already been ordered to stop every hour or so. I was tempted to complain about how excessive it was, but Esmer was a fair distance away, and we’d be on the road for longer than it took to get to St Vanhalie.

At first Vanessa made small talk of the kind she sometimes made with me in her home. Even though it was the Brightmore-Pallister home, I still thought of it as the Pallister home, her presence was so dominating and strong in Grimglass.

After many hours of silence, she took a small breath.

‘I’m looking forward to seeing Richard,’ she said. ‘Kay would have him in Grimglass all the time, but it’s no place for a boy of society to get his education.’

‘Kay is under the impression that-’ I winced. I realised that was a dangerous sentence to complete. Vanessa cast a disparaging, arched eyebrow my way.

‘No, please, tell me,’ she said. ‘I don’t miss him when he’s gone, is that it? I don’t. People always expect mothers to care for naught except their children once they have them. But Grimglass still needs to fend against Darne’s machinations, and the world still turns on its axis. But also, my happiest years were spent being educated in Esmer, attending Miss Flowerdew’s. There are those of us for who the city is a balm. I don’t miss Richard, because I believe he loves Esmer as he loves Grimglass. I trust he will tell me if anything is awry.’

It hadn’t occurred to me to think about how mothers felt after their children were born. My own mother, Methony, was obstinate, strong-willed, and I had never much imagined her as the maternal sort. It seemed normal to me that women would sometimes want more than to only dote on their children once they were born.

‘Kay is a simple man,’ Vanessa said, then sighed. ‘Well, I suppose he’s not in some ways, but he is Caloxan, and he is a _country_ man. Country men always want boys to grow up in the country, and I think Kay also likes Richard and was happy to accept the mantle of fatherhood. So he misses Richard and seeks excuses to keep him in Grimglass. He’s the same with Julian, too. It was easy to let Julian into the household, it stopped Kay from griping so often about Richard.’

‘And Julian?’ I said. ‘How does he fare?’

Vanessa shared a meaningful look with Woodlock, then carefully adjusted her skirts. Her clothing was so deeply, lacily feminine, at complete odds with her slab-like face and heavy, blunt features. But I liked how she, too, decided to wear what she liked instead of what might suit her.

It wasn’t until the two of us were stuck in the brougham together, that I realised that while she understood how to operate in Esmer’s high society, she was incredibly cognisant of her own jarring features and decided to highlight them with her frippery, instead of masking them. It reminded me of every piece of clothing I picked out for myself in the Mirador, precisely because it clashed horrendously with my long red hair, my yellow and blue eyes. If they were going to mock me for my appearance, let them never have the chance to look away from me. I’d be the loudest thing there.

‘Julian has been circumspect since Murtagh talked to him,’ Vanessa said. ‘I think there might be some scandal, the day Amice realises that Julian has been pining after him for some time.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said, thinking of all the times Amice had pined to me over Julian while delivering groceries.

‘Oh yes,’ Vanessa said.

‘But…’ I hesitated.

‘Oh believe me, I know. They’re both extremely stupid. We’d hoped they’d realise long before now.’

‘You…’ I stared at her. ‘Would you allow it? If they ever realise?’

‘It’s controversial,’ Vanessa admitted. ‘But if one is to be controversial, better to do it in the relative safety of Grimglass. I don’t know if you’ve realised yet, but it’s something of a haven for…eccentric people. Everyone loves Adelais, and everyone knows how much she enjoys women. Julian will always be a difficult case anyway, an aethereal who was meant to be a Duke, but can’t now that he’s cursed with spirit sight. I know, I know, you’re here to fix all of that apparently. But Julian is still _Julian.’_

We fell into silence after that. I was shocked at the revelation that Julian and Amice were apparently both pining over each other, but that Julian was dealing with his emotions with alcohol and fucking everyone in the city who would have him, and Amice was dealing with his by visiting the lighthouse and moaning.

‘Amice isn’t the answer to Julian’s problems, anyway,’ Vanessa said an hour later, as though our conversation was continuing naturally, and I hadn’t been jerked out of a doze. ‘Love doesn’t solve things like that, though it’s nice to imagine they do. Julian needs to decide what he wants for himself, and instead he floats uselessly adrift. Kay says to leave him be. But Kay is not without his own moodiness.’

I thought of myself in the lighthouse and decided to say nothing at all. After a moment, Vanessa laughed, a gleam in her eyes. She looked at me as though she understood very well that I was part of that club of moody depressed men, and I could tell that she found it all very amusing.

*

The next day, closer to Esmer than before, I put my rings on in the brougham, and Vanessa asked if she could take a closer look.

I offered her my hand, and she didn’t touch it as she leaned forwards, but I could see the awe and marvel in her features.

‘You’ve read Una Semmence’s wizard books too, have you?’ I said drily.

Vanessa burst into tinkling, high laughter. ‘I know I don’t look it, Felix, but I _am_ a woman, and those books have been all the rage for some time now. But no, it is simply that the tattoos are very finely done, and the rings are finely made. But you can never put those tattoos away, can you? You can take your rings off, but your tattoos mean you can never pretend to be something you aren’t.’

‘Gloves work sometimes,’ I said, thinking of the times I’d had to use them.

‘Look here,’ Vanessa said, ‘you could have come to Esmer and _not_ been one of the most controversial figures we’ve had in a good long while, but you were. I’m sure people would associate you far less with Una Semmence, if you didn’t blow into our country in exile from the land of wizards, and then proceed to kill all of our greatest, undefeatable monsters that our magicians have been powerless against for _centuries.’_

Woodlock chuckled sweetly. I felt my cheeks colour.

‘See?’ Vanessa said, grinning at me. ‘No point wearing gloves here, it’s not like you can hide your height or your hair.’

‘I don’t plan to hide in Esmer,’ I said, faintly irritated.

‘Oh, it’s about time to stop I think. I’ll signal the driver.’ With that, Vanessa rapped on the carriage wall behind my head. A few minutes later I was stretching my legs, and she was relieving herself behind the carriage. I realised, as I stared up at the bright blue sky with the kind of clouds that looked like they belonged in children’s books, that I quite liked Vanessa.

Our conversation was lighter for the rest of the afternoon, and Woodlock joined in sometimes, at first shyly, and then with a verve that was endearing. Vanessa clearly encouraged Woodlock to speak freely, for she was full of witty, sly repartees that Vanessa enjoyed as much as I did. 

Vanessa was more than what she seemed. I know Murtagh didn’t always think much of her, but I could see why Kay seemed happy to share a household with her, even if they didn’t share love.

*

Vanessa was dropped off at her Esmerine home, and I was sent on to The Silver Sparrow, an upmarket hotel in one of the nicer Dominions, not too far from The Institution. Since I wasn’t staying for longer than about two weeks this time, there was no point finding a home to rent.

When I arrived, the carriage driver arranged for my bags to be taken to my ground floor room, talking to the staff within.

I walked, exhausted, into the reception area, and immediately a young woman threw herself at me, wrapping her arms around me.

‘Cry your mercy, Felix, but it’s been nearly _three years!’_

Gartrett Corbie stepped back from me, staring up at me with luminous blue-violet eyes and curly pale blonde hair that was even prettier now than it was when I’d first met her in Bernatha. I smiled helplessly, even as I felt unsettled by the physical contact.

‘Two years,’ I said, staring at her.

‘Nearly three,’ she corrected sternly. ‘Are you losing track of time in Grimglass? No one would be surprised. Lumme, but I don’t have long to talk, I’m meant to be doing fieldwork today, otherwise I’d stay. You’re going to the Institution aren’t you? The rumours are true?’

A older woman hovered nearby and I looked over to her. She bobbed neatly. ‘You’ve been checked in, Virtuer Harrowgate, and your room is available. There’s a sitting area in your room for guests.’

‘You’d best show us,’ Corbie said, ‘so we stop clogging your foyer.’

Corbie was already following the woman ahead of me, taking charge of my life as effortlessly as she’d taken charge of it when we’d first met. At first she’d been my guide, and then my pimp, and then my student for a time – even as she was still my pimp – until finally she was a confidante and a friend. I never replied to her letters fast enough, and I realised with a fierce ache that even though I lived well enough without her, I’d missed her.

She didn’t wear the bright colours of prostitutes anymore, heading towards the duns and greys in heavy fabrics that most Corambins preferred. But she was half-Ygressine, with that blonde hair, those blue-violet eyes, her finely made jaw that was less heavy than any Corambins’. And like the Ygressines, she still favoured pops of colour. A bright blue barrette in her hair, a blue and violet scarf, a bracelet of blue and violet jewels.

As soon as she was in my room, she went to the kettle that had been provided and made the two of us tea.

‘The rumours are fierce,’ Corbid said, looking sidelong at me. ‘They say you saved a Carey, with that noirance you taught me how to see. Is it true?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And you? Are you twenty yet?’

‘Holy Lady, stop,’ Corbie said, shaking her head at me and laughing. ‘Twenty, yes. Twenty one soon. I’ve been so busy. I work at a bookshop and run around trying to get some of the smaller publishers represented. The College has been good though, and Hutch looks out for me. Virtuer Hutchence. He’s a good sort.’

‘No more alternative career choices in your future?’ I said, arching eyebrows at her.

‘No more in yours either,’ she said, grinning. ‘Do you miss it?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I thought I did, for a time, and then realised I missed the sex, not everything else.’

‘Am not lacking for sex here in Esmer,’ Corbie said, rolling her eyes. ‘I never told anyone what I used to do, worried for how they’d see me, but they all still found out, and apparently that makes me ‘worldly.’ It’s _tiresome.’_

‘And the magic? How’s that coming along?’

‘Holy Lady, I’ve wanted to show you for _so_ long!’

She closed her eyes for a moment, and I felt the prickling of her magic in the room. Then all at once about thirty golden fireflies appeared. They moved dozily back and forth, rather than flitting in agitation, and produced a lovely soft light. Much nicer than when she tried to copy my own green chrysanthemum witchlights.

‘Am the best in my class,’ Corbie said proudly, looking up at them. ‘Can do more, but that requires too much concentration. This I can do and still hold a conversation and make some tea.’

She walked over and handed me a cup, then sat down at the small side table, gesturing at me to join her in the opposite chair. As I eased down, she watched my leg and the cane sharply, but didn’t say a word. After a while she ignored it, and I was grateful that she didn’t draw attention to the injury.

I was painfully conscious of the time, I wanted to get to the Institution before the fathoms stopped running.

‘Felix, they say you consult with the Duke of Murtagh a lot these days. But I remember hiring you out to him at the Althammara,’ she said, looking at me, her gaze almost careful. ‘I’ve always liked His Grace but…everything’s okay? Everything’s okay, isn’t it?’

I sipped at my tea, then nodded, uncertain what to say. Of course she knew the Duke of Murtagh was a flame, and she knew I’d been paid to work as a shadow only twice. I would have done it more, but the Clock of Eclipses gang rape had stopped that – and all future prostitution – in its tracks. The first time I was paid for being a shadow in Corambis, I’d seen Murtagh, and realised I was not a flame at all, even though that was the safer position, the easier one, the one less exploited by my fellow men. The second time, I was hired to be fucked almost to death to awaken a great beast of a clock, and I was unsafe, and it was not easy, and I was exploited by more men than I could count.

And women.

I shuddered and tried not to think about it.

‘Can’t help but feel protective,’ Corbie muttered into her cup, before taking a huge mouthful and setting the cup down half-drunk already. ‘You were never much for looking out for yourself. And Mildmay? How’s he?’

‘He likes Grimglass,’ I said, smiling as I realised how true it was. ‘He orders books, he reads every day, he’s handy and intuitive and innovative and smarter than I am on many practical matters, that means the whole town has fallen in love with him. I think they just believe him to be a loveable rogue.’

‘He is that,’ Corbie said, her expression soft. ‘There’s no one out there like Mildmay, but there’s no one out there like you either, Felix. Grimglass doesn’t know how lucky it is. How long are you staying this time?’

‘Two weeks,’ I said. ‘I should be at the Institution for a good part of that, so if you let me know where you’re staying – still with Mrs Davidge? – we can meet, if you’re not too busy.’

‘Never too busy to see you,’ Corbie said in her musical voice, then finished the rest of her tea. ‘Oh, Lumme, I’m making a liar out of myself. I have to go. If they knew I was coming to see you, well, they’d probably be jealous, but I’m a risky enough student as it is. Don’t want to give them more reasons to get rid of me. The Women’s Thaumaturgical College wants the _genteel_ women, and an ex-prostitute is not that. Also I think women’s magic scares all the men.’

‘Ah, yes, of course,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘If that’s what they believe, then they deserve to be scared.’

Corbie beamed at me, even as she stood and waved a hand, dismissing her witchlights. I went to stand and she waved me down. ‘Holy Lady, don’t trouble yourself. Also, yes, I’ve _missed_ you. Not many men in Corambis who aren’t scared of women, just because we’re women. Hutch is good though, and Ashmead’s getting better. Also, am still staying with Mrs Davidge. But I don’t think you ever saw me there, so I’ll leave the address at reception some time. Am sorry for the hug, forgot all about it until I already had my arms around you!’

I waved it off, smiling tiredly, and she grinned at me.

‘Just think,’ she said, ‘you might be teaching me again soon! In a few months! I’ll be your best student, just wait.’

‘I wouldn’t expect anything less,’ I said.

She tipped her head towards me, more of a bow than a curtsey, and then was out of the door in a whirl of a dun skirt and heels.

I picked up my cup of tea and finished it, and decided to take five minutes to simply breathe before heading out again.

*

It was amazing how quickly I remembered how to make my way around Esmer. People still stared, and they took in my limp and my cane, and I hated that I cared so much about their judgement. In Grimglass, Mildmay had his own limp, Walsh was old and rheumatic, Murtagh when he visited had his arm to contend with. Adelais was the fittest of the lot of us, but she’d never made me feel like a spectacle because of how I walked. She shoved me outside frequently, and after my cane was made, she handed that to me along with my coat, if I wasn’t already holding it, before slamming the door on me.

Here, my limp was a spectacle, as much as my height, my hair, my eyes, my tattoos, the gold and garnet rings I’d put on my fingers. But while catching the fathom to The Institution, I realised the limp was just one more thing I couldn’t change. One more thing they – and I – would simply have to get used to. Abruptly, I felt far more at ease with my limp and the way my body had changed, than I had in the last two and a half years.

Still, going from the brougham to the hotel to The Institution was rough. I needed to sit and rest several times, focusing on my breathing, working through some exercises. The pain in my calf clawed up into me, all the way into back of my head. Pecton said that pain was its own master, it demanded rest and food and care, it was like sharing my body with a hitchhiker. In that moment, it was exactly how I felt.

Esmer was the same as always. There were new buildings here and there, but the city was clean, thriving, the shops were open and people seemed prosperous. Folks still largely wore the same dour clothing; though I thought I saw more colours than I used to see, and not just on the prostitutes.

An hour later I walked through the halls of The Institution, feeling the presence of magic, smelling the books in the classrooms, and I felt a wave of nostalgia so powerful I almost had to stop. I hadn’t realised how much I missed it. Even though I’d only known this place for a brief period of time, I felt a profound sense of belonging and a rift in me to know that it had been taken from me.

Exile upon exile, I didn’t think I could handle another.

John Ashmead’s office door was open, he sat at his desk absorbed by something written in a scroll, a quill held up in his other hand like he was making annotations. His dun-coloured hair was still in the same close-cropped style, his dark eyes lively upon the scroll. I knocked quietly and he looked up, then smiled with real warmth. Helplessly, I smiled back.

‘Felix,’ he said, getting up immediately, putting everything down. He navigated the stacks of papers and books and came over, grasping my free hand in his own. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes.’

‘Yes,’ I said, smiling. ‘As are you. I hear you might have some employment for me?’

Ashmead grinned, then stepped backwards into his office and showed me over to one of the chairs. I sat down carefully, then pushed the chair back so I could stretch my leg out. I would need to soak it for at least an hour tonight. I could hear Pecton’s grim instructions in my head, it would need to be stretched, soaked, then stretched again. The leg slightly bent as I slept, so that it wasn’t too flexed or cramped overnight, possibly even a compression bandage to prevent swelling.

I heard Pecton’s voice sternly saying it should have been like that from the very beginning.

Ashmead returned from talking to his secretary, perhaps about refreshments, then sat opposite me at his large table.

‘The Women’s Thaumaturgical College will take you,’ Ashmead said. ‘I’ve talked to Hastings, and we have full approval from their board. Of course that’s not _Circle_ approval, but the Circle doesn’t hold _complete_ sway over the Women’s College. Since you’ve returned Clovis Carey back to Carey House, opinions are…shifting rapidly. I think you’ll find yourself with far more favour than before, though some notoriety remains.’

‘When am I ever without it?’ I said.

‘I know you’re only staying for two weeks this time,’ Ashmead said. ‘We can sort out a curriculum for non-rationalist magic that allows you time away from Esmer, perhaps short courses instead of full semesters. And I’ve looked over your notes so far and everything seems largely in order. It’s obvious you were made for teaching.’

I was baffled by the compliment, but smiled all the same. Malkar hadn’t thought I was made for anything other than being fucked or tortured. But I liked teaching and it still felt unreal to be here in Esmer after two years of resigning myself to an empty, quiet life.

‘I wish I’d been there to see what you achieved with Clovis Carey,’ Ashmead said abruptly, leaning forwards with his elbows on the table, hands laced under his chin, dark eyes alight. ‘Of course I wasn’t sure what I thought of it at first, aethereals and hauntings and ghosts. But you’ve been very convincing over the years.’

‘The evidence is all around you,’ I said. ‘All I did was frame it academically enough that you had no choice but to accept it.’

Ashmead nodded, shrugged, then beamed as his secretary came in with tea and biscuits. She left, managing to not quite openly stare at me as she went.

‘Ah, I believe I’m starting to get a sense of the controversy already,’ I said drily.

‘And do you hate it? Being back?’

‘I’ve not been back for more than two hours yet,’ I said. ‘But…I think I’ve missed it.’

The noise, the shops, the houses of haute couture and haberdashery. The sound of horse hooves on the cobblestones. The fine architecture and stained glass, the streetlights and the benches, the topiary and planters. Not a green rolling field to be seen, the sound of the ocean far away, and a bustling city, a thriving economy. Esmer was a busy, cultivated city with aspirations for education and innovation and invention.

‘Forgive me for being so forward,’ Ashmead said, ‘but I’ve been concerned that Grimglass was…a poor fit for you. It was the best we could offer at the time and the safest location.’

‘I’ve been fortunate that His Grace wants to educate others so that people like his brother might be healed,’ I said, even as Ashmead leaned back in his chair and smiled knowingly.

From what Murtagh had said, he visited Ashmead about securing employment for me long before I ever knew Clovis existed as an aethereal in an asylum. I wondered how much Ashmead knew about us. He didn’t seem like the kind of person to judge unfairly, but there was a quiet authority to him all the same that made this whole visit nerve-wracking. I naturally sought Ashmead’s approval, even when I’d worked at the Institution.

‘Yes, that is fortunate,’ Ashmead said. ‘I don’t know what your calendar looks like, but after the weekend, I thought we might meet together on Lunedy and Martedy? After that, we can ideally present a solid curriculum to Hastings, get approval from the Women’s Thaumaturgical College, and then present to the Circle? Hutch – that is, Virtuer Hutchence – will want to steal you away at some point. Virtuer Stone as well. Don’t be surprised if students start accosting you in the halls. The rumours have been spreading wildly at The Institution even before Clovis Carey returned.’

‘I didn’t realise,’ I said. ‘I hope it hasn’t been too much trouble?’

‘If anything, it’s been good for business,’ Ashmead said, pouring tea for the both of us, and passing me a chocolate-covered biscuit. I bit into it and was painfully conscious of the fact that while this was good quality for Esmer, I missed Adelais’ cooking.

A warm, strange feeling spread through me, this knowledge that I didn’t suddenly loathe Grimglass because I was in Esmer, which I’d feared would happen. It was like a secret within me, the knowledge that I’d be returning to Mildmay and the rest of them, even while I could possibly come here and teach.

‘None of it seems quite real yet,’ I admitted. ‘I’d…somewhat resigned myself to a rather different life.’

‘At the time, so had we,’ Ashmead said frankly. ‘It also allowed us not to look at the fact that we bound your magic, which made some of us uncomfortable. You know, of course, how I felt about it, but it didn’t sit well with some of the others, either. We have of course made drastic sentences against criminals, especially against Mulkists, but your situation is unique. I’m simply relieved to see you safe and relatively well. The limp is nasty, though. You never mentioned it in your letters?’

‘An accident early on,’ I said, grimacing. ‘Mildmay and Walsh were rigging the lighthouse for an elevator, I tripped and fell over some of the debris one evening. It was my own fault. There was a labyrinth beneath the lighthouse and I was purging it of its noirance – as much as I could, at any rate – and was dazed when I came upstairs.’

It was the last time I’d ever manage to walk up stairs without any pain ever again.

‘I remember you mentioning the labyrinth,’ Ashmead said, nodding slowly. ‘Still, I’m sorry to hear of the injury. Now, shall we start talking about a course on healing aethereals?’

‘It’s really a course on noirance and exorcism,’ I said. ‘Heretical magic in Melusine.’

‘But not here,’ Ashmead said firmly. ‘Of course, we frown on forced possession and necromancy, but exorcism and noirance are different schools under the umbrella. And if it’s not heretical here, and we step forwards with certainty, it need never be heretical, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Refreshingly open-minded,’ I said. ‘But does the Circle agree with you?’

‘And that’s why we’ll figure out this curriculum first. They like rational paperwork they can look at, as dreary as that sounds.’

‘I would never have imagined,’ I said, gesturing absently to one of the many stacks of paper. ‘Though I’m not sure how happy they’ll be with a non-rationalist curriculum in the first place.’

Ashmead chuckled, then pulled out some new sheafs of paper and re-inked his quill.

‘It’s about time we learned some new branches of magic. Should we get started?’ he said.

I reached for the cup of tea and nodded, glad to have something to focus on that wasn’t Grice’s notes, or Pecton’s instructions on how to care for my leg.

*

I returned to the hotel hours later, and was abruptly intercepted by Wyatt, waiting by an empty brougham.

‘His Grace, the Duke of Murtagh, desires your company,’ Wyatt said formally. Then he bowed slightly towards me. ‘If you’re amenable?’

‘Does he desire my company for dinner? Or shall I fetch my bags?’ I said, unable to keep the sharpness out of my voice. I wanted to see Murtagh badly, but I was also tired, and the carriage ride from Grimglass to Esmer followed by sitting and talking about the nuts and bolts of a teaching curriculum – making my brain work harder than it had in years – had left me tetchy.

‘If you’ll just wait in the carriage, Virtuer Harrowgate, I’ll arrange everything,’ Wyatt said placidly. He opened the carriage door and I went inside. I immediately shoved my back into the other side of the carriage so I could get my leg elevated onto the chair where someone else would normally sit beside me. I still had to keep it partially bent, and I pressed into the muscles and ligaments myself and felt the unforgiving tightness.

Twenty minutes later, we were travelling from The Silver Sparrow towards Carey House. I closed my eyes and wanted sleep, but ached for Murtagh’s hands on me in a way that felt like heartsickness. It was like my body had a calendar, and if I didn’t see Murtagh for longer than a month, I needed him in ways I couldn’t fathom.

I didn’t want to live with him – I was fairly certain I’d hate how controlling he could be if I had to experience it on a daily basis – but nor did I want to live without him. Even when I was tired, sore, and irritable.

Wyatt organised getting my bags into Carey House, and then he escorted me into the house himself. He didn’t comment on the cane or my limp, he didn’t make any conversation. He seemed to be the kind of fellow who only spoke when spoken to, unless – perhaps – he was around Murtagh.

Wyatt was on his way to showing me to whatever room he wanted me to wait in, when Isobel Carey stepped into the corridor and smiled at him.

‘I can take it from here, Wyatt,’ she said.

‘Yes, my Lady.’

Isobel looked me up and down, taking in the cane, my loose hair, and perhaps the uncertain expression on my face. Of course I had been involved in affairs in the Mirador, I had both been ‘the other man’ and been the one seeking ‘other men.’ I had even cheated on Gideon, reprehensibly, over and over again. But to be here now, in the manor of Isobel and Ferrand Carey, I was painfully aware of my vulnerable position.

She led me not into a sitting room, but into a fairly neat office that I recognised was Murtagh’s by scent alone. He had a distinctive cologne. Just smelling it made me feel a mixture of soothed and anticipatory.

‘He has my blessing, you know,’ Isobel said, her voice sharp. ‘Just as I have his when it comes to Dunne. You wouldn’t have been invited here if I didn’t agree to it. I know Ferrand seems like someone who always gets his way, but not in this house.’

‘Yes, of course, Your Grace,’ I said.

Her gaze was assessing as she studied me further.

‘Ferrand is currently tied up on some business matters that can’t be avoided. I thought, perhaps, that you might wish to meet with Clovis?’

I wanted nothing more than to sit down and have someone draw me a bath, but I didn’t feel able to ask for either. So I simply nodded, then murmured that yes, of course, I would like to see Clovis.

And so I was led down a hall, and blissfully not up any stairs. Isobel showed me into a tastefully furnished bedroom. Clovis was sitting on a sturdy, cushioned chair, and he watched me with bright, curious eyes as I entered. But I could see how sallow he was, the dark circles under his eyes.

‘Sir Carey,’ I said, unsure of the appropriate address. I bowed slightly, and Isobel stood a little to the side, but didn’t leave the room.

I couldn’t say I blamed her. I didn’t know what degree of care Clovis Carey needed, and I’m not sure I would have trusted me alone with him either.

‘I don’t know if you remember me,’ I said, carefully sitting down in the chair next to him. ‘I’m Felix Harrowgate, I met you in St Vanhalie.’

‘…Saved me,’ Clovis said, his voice scratchy.

I winced. ‘It is something any healer or magician would have been able to do, were they trained to it,’ I said swiftly. ‘I am deeply sorry for all the suffering you’ve endured. How… How are you faring?’

I was afraid to ask. It was one thing to momentously exorcise someone and then walk away, leaving the hard recovery to everyone else. It was quite another to be here and see the wooden walker by the bed, the well-used bedclothes, the pitcher of water and the weathered face of a man who wasn’t that much older than Ferrand.

‘You’re…a foreigner,’ Clovis said. ‘Marathat?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ I said.

Clovis nodded, then smiled a little. It was a gentle, knowing smile, like Murtagh when he was feeling particularly fond of me. I was breathless then, because I could see how much of Clovis’ mind had remained, how whole he was beneath his recovering body. It cast my own work with Pecton into a new light. I only had to work on my leg, but Clovis had to work on every aspect of himself.

‘I’m better than they thought,’ Clovis said with slow, measured patience, like he had to remember how to say every word. ‘Lonely. I had…company, for so long. They were…always with me, you see.’

I sighed, nodding. ‘Yes. It must be quite a shock.’

‘I knew time…was passing,’ Clovis said. ‘But not so much. Not… But, anyway, you brought me back to my family. My brother. Felix Harrowgate, _you…_ did that.’

I stared at him in alarm, then looked at Isobel, trying to see if there might be a way that she could stop this from happening. I didn’t want to be given this sort of recognition for work that should have been done a lifetime ago. But she only watched us and didn’t say a word.

‘Truly, thank you,’ Clovis said. ‘Whatever you want, I can…make sure Ferrand gives it to you.’

I couldn’t help but laugh, then smiled at him. ‘No, no, you owe me nothing. Truthfully, I-’

At that moment, Murtagh walked in and seemed unsurprised to see me there.

‘It’s all done,’ he said in his low voice, faintly impatient, to Isobel. ‘You can check the paperwork over yourself.’

‘Oh, I don’t care about that. You’re missing out on Felix looking extremely uncomfortable because Clovis is trying to call him a hero.’

‘Ah,’ Murtagh said, his amber eyes razor sharp as they found mine. ‘You don’t think you did something heroic?’

‘ _Anyway,’_ I said, trying not to glare at Murtagh and not quite succeeding, before turning back to Clovis. ‘As I was saying, you’re still at risk of this kind of possession happening again.’ At that, Murtagh stiffened, and Isobel’s inhale was sharp. ‘When you’re stronger, I’ll come back and teach you some techniques that will help protect you, and warning signs to be aware of, in case you need me to return. It won’t ever be as bad as before, I promise you that, but as an aethereal, and one so…previously affected, you may find that spirits are attracted to your openness.’

Clovis looked at me and nodded soberly. ‘I can’t…have one with me? Safely? I’m so lonely without them.’

It wasn’t a problem I’d foreseen, but it made so much sense. He’d spent decades with a tiny family of spirits, and one of them had been a child. Perhaps to him, it was the family he had when he no longer knew his family.

‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly. ‘But I wouldn’t encourage it until your health was more robust. Sometimes you have to learn how to keep your doors closed to everyone, before you learn how to open one to someone you can trust. And those spirits don’t belong here, Sir Carey, they’re seeking their own peace.’

‘Yes,’ Clovis said soberly. ‘Yes. I…I understand. Will you come back? Soon?’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said, nodding. ‘If the Duke and Duchess allow it.’

‘I don’t think that will be a problem,’ Murtagh said, standing close to me as I stood. I put nearly my full weight on my cane to save myself from the worst of the pain in my calf. ‘Clovis, he might come back again in the next few days, all right? You know we talked about the curriculum he’s working on at The Institution. In the meantime, we’ll figure out what to do about the loneliness.’

‘Cook’s cat has just had kittens,’ Isobel said brightly.

_‘No,’_ Murtagh said, turning me towards the door.

‘I…like kittens,’ Clovis said.

‘Holy Lady,’ Murtagh muttered, dragging his hand over his face. _‘No!’_

‘I do appreciate your input, Ferrand,’ Isobel said warmly, as I was practically herded out of the room. ‘I’ll be sure to take it into account when we’re deciding on which kitten.’

‘You can’t replace his…his _hauntings_ with a kitten,’ Murtagh said, turning around, and the last I saw was Clovis smiling cheekily at his brother, and Murtagh grinning back at him. The door closed, Isobel still inside the room, and Murtagh’s hand immediately went to the small of my back. He leaned towards me, somehow managing to make me feel surrounded.

‘Well, you look _exhausted,’_ Murtagh said, and somehow managed to make those four words sound like a prelude to being fucked to within an inch of my life.

I could only nod.

‘I’ll have one of the servants draw you a bath. Have you rested at all?’

I stared at him levelly. ‘Exactly when did you think I’d rest, Ferrand? When I arrived after some six hours of carriage riding and went straight to the Institution to talk about my curriculum with Virtuer Ashmead? Or when I went back to The Silver Sparrow fully expecting to relax, only to be brought here? Bags included?’

Murtagh didn’t look contrite or guilty. If anything, his smile widened and was dangerous enough that I felt my cock begin to harden.

‘Come on,’ Murtagh said, curling his fingers at the small of my back.

_‘You-’_ I said, and then looked around the corridors. I felt faintly scandalised, and it wasn’t until we must have been in either one of the guest rooms, or perhaps another bedroom of his, that I stepped away from him. ‘You can’t expect to have me _here,_ Ferrand.’

‘I don’t,’ Murtagh said. ‘Not tonight, anyway. But you’d let me have my way, wouldn’t you, little rabbit? If I told you to strip and get on the bed for me, you’d do it.’

‘You seem more insatiable than usual.’

Murtagh backed me into the wall, and heat bloomed inside of me as he rested his hands on my hips, thumbs rubbing little circles into my skin.

Then he reached up and grasped my jaw, pulling my mouth down to his. My eyes flew open for a second, meeting his gaze, his eyes crinkled like he was already pleased at my shock. And then my eyes closed as he forced my mouth open with his, licking his way teasingly into my mouth, slicking over the top of my tongue before thrusting in deeply, like he wished to claim me every way.

I sagged back against the wall, too tired to consider fighting the arousal that swelled within me, my cock a discomfort in my trousers. And his hand slipped under my shirt and rubbed at my belly, the touch so shocking that I moaned sharply, the muscles twitching beyond my control.

But he kept doing it – kissing me, touching me – until I lost track of everything but his mouth on mine, his fingers teasing at the top of my trousers. I felt light-headed and heavy all at once, and when he drew back only a short distance, I had to tear my mouth away and gasp, since I seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.

‘Well, look at you,’ Murtagh said, sounding damnably put together. ‘I’ve had you in Bernatha. I’ve had you in Grimglass. But I’ve never had you in Esmer, and I plan to make sure you remember this city for more than just its rumours and its Institute.’

‘Oh,’ I breathed, as he rubbed his fingers over my lips, spreading the saliva clinging there, smearing it across my cheek. I felt violated and wanted all at once, even as my sore calf pulsed at me.

‘Now,’ Murtagh said, his voice low. ‘We’ll get you into the bath, I’ll look over your leg, and then I was thinking that tonight we might go and visit The Copse.’

It took me a moment to understand what he meant. He hadn’t mentioned The Copse in some time. And then I remembered it was the place for flames and shadows, and my eyes widened with a mixture of fear and anticipation.

‘Your not-quite-brothel of flames and shadows,’ I said, staring at him.

‘If you want to think of it that way, you can,’ Murtagh said. ‘You won’t learn otherwise until you see it. But Gisela and Keane are very much dying to meet you, and I think I want to show you off to everyone who can’t have you.’

I swallowed thickly, and he placed his hand at the side of my neck, his fingers digging in.

‘Because they _can’t_ , Felix,’ Murtagh said fiercely. ‘But I plan on having you.’

He pressed his hand between my legs, palm hot against the curve of my cock. I blinked rapidly to keep my focus, frustrated already, disarmed with only a kiss and his hands in less than ten minutes. He watched me with a lion’s satisfaction, and then he leaned up and bit at my bottom lip so possessively that it was less about my pleasure and more about his need to consume. My heart beat hard in my chest, all my prostitute’s training forgotten.

He leaned up and pressed his mouth to my ear. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, his low voice gravelly and fervent, and I stared ahead, surprised at the sentiment as much as the naked want in his words. It kindled up the love in me that I tried not to think about, tried not to look at. What an inconvenience it was, to feel this way for someone who didn’t believe in love between men. But the knife of it was just one more thing adding to the feel of him around me, and I was drowning already.

‘Sir,’ I said softly, leaning towards him.

‘Shhh,’ Murtagh said, tracing his fingers over my jaw and my cheek, before digging his fingers into my scalp and knotting up a handful of hair. I groaned at how easily he showed ownership, how confident he was. ‘I have you, Felix. You’ll see. Tonight will be fine.’

I wasn’t sure it would be, but after everything we’d been through together, I didn’t have the heart to refute him.

‘Now,’ he said, stepping away from me and leaving me cold in his absence. ‘I’d best organise that bath, and some refreshment, I think. And how well is Clovis doing? I can’t believe it. Even Isobel is pleased.’

He walked away from me towards the door, and I stared at him, cock hard and already wanting him to burn me alive. I thought it was very unfair that he could switch gears so quickly while I was still leaning back uselessly against the wall.

But before he opened the door, he turned back and flashed a flame’s grin at me. I realised I was feeling exactly what he wanted me to feel. So I closed my eyes and gave myself over to him, to his care, because I was too tired to fight, because I’d long ago learned that Murtagh wanted all of me, and not just the trained prostitute that had been wrought from my wretched childhood.


	23. It's So Easy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s note:** This was meant to be a very intense smut scene but Felix had other ideas (he got very depressed because he was tired and then became, well, Emotional). So I refer you back to their other smut scenes, and hope you still enjoy this chapter even though Murtagh isn’t turning Felix inside out, lmao.
> 
> (I still plan for there to be another BDSM scene between these two! It’s been pushed back a chapter).

The bath was deeper than I expected for Corambins, and it was luxurious, spending entirely too long in there. Afterwards, Murtagh made small talk with me while he massaged my leg and marvelled at how improved it was already. It amazed me, that after a day of increasing pain, after days of travel, he could still feel the difference. I made up my mind to find some way to gift Pecton in gratitude for the changes he’d wrought, and I was incredulous at how quickly I’d accepted this different state as the norm.

We took a brougham to West Isserly, just the two of us. I half-expected Murtagh to make me kneel for him there and then in the carriage and take him into my mouth, but instead he wrapped a blanket around me and told me to get some rest, and to let him know if my leg was giving me any more grief than normal.

The rumbling of the carriage wheels over well-maintained roads lulled me into a deep and exhausted sleep.

‘My lovely shadow, come on now. Wake up, little rabbit. It’s time to wake up.’

I roused groggily, for a moment unaware of where I was and who I was with. And Murtagh was there, an arm around me, such an uncommonly tender expression on his face that I woke fully with a shock.

‘There,’ he said. ‘We’re here.’

‘Already?’ I said, and he smiled. He drew back the curtain. I saw darkness and frowned. That wasn’t normal darkness, it wasn’t night, there were no stairs. I realised we were underground.

My whole body turned electric with fear, and it wasn’t until that moment I realised the events around awakening the Clock of Eclipses had left explosions in my mind. I’d just discovered one. For I remembered being led deep underground while blindfolded, I remembered all of their voices as they’d treated me like a slave, a prisoner, a useless object only good for fucking and killing.

I could hear my breathing shuddering and was already frustrated with myself.

‘Damn it all,’ I gasped. ‘Where are we? Why are we underground?’

I hated my shaking voice, yanking the blanket off myself and annoyed that Murtagh was seeing this, instead of a shadow ready to visit the Copse.

‘It’s a secret entrance, to protect the identities of those who go within,’ Murtagh said. ‘Felix… What’s wrong?’

‘The Clock of Eclipses,’ I said. ‘That bastard thing. I don’t know why I’m remembering anything to do with it now. I was so sure it was behind me, like it was any different than anything that happened when I lived with Malkar.’

I couldn’t pull his name back, even though I tried. As a result the word came out small and swallowed. But the name jolted me out of my own terror. I stared at Murtagh’s amber eyes instead.

‘It’s been years,’ I said weakly.

‘Yes,’ Murtagh said, taking one of my hands in both of his. ‘And I still wake up dreaming of the fields of Desperen, and my boy, it’s been _decades._ There are some things that stay with us, and it doesn’t unman you to be given a fright. How are you feeling?’

‘Irritable,’ I muttered. ‘And not in the mood for whatever you have planned, Murtagh.’

I ducked my head. That was a very poor attitude for a shadow to show indeed, I was sure of it. And had I shown even anything slightly like it as a child or a teenager, I would have been beaten half to death for it.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘No, I’m grateful for your honesty. But you don’t know what I have planned, Felix. Actually, it’s why I woke you. There’s a protocol in the Copse, and I wanted to give you a quick primer. They’ll not expect you to know everything as it’s your first time visiting, and you’re a foreigner. But nonetheless, there are some rules.’

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I could hardly wait to hear how it was perfectly legitimate for every flame in the Copse to fuck me blind just because they wanted to. I tried to think of what similar clubs in Melusine offered, back when I was high on Phoenix, prostituting myself for Lorenzo at the Shining Tiger and ready to do anything to keep that high going, back when I knew how to display my best assets, and they were less to do with my manliness and more to do with my youth.

‘The first is this,’ Murtagh said, bringing out a soft leather collar with some kind of pendant hanging from it. I realised as Murtagh reached around my neck to fix it in place, that the pendant was in the shape of a flame. ‘It indicates that you’re a claimed shadow, which means no one can touch you without your permission.’

‘ _My_ permission,’ I said in confusion. Surely he’d misspoken.

‘Yes, yours,’ Murtagh said firmly. ‘This applies to _all_ forms of touch, whether it’s kisses on the cheek, embraces of greeting, or even someone reaching out to grasp your shoulder. If you don’t want to be touched by someone – shadow or flame – you hold out your hand like you’re refusing a waiter.’

Murtagh showed me, and I stared at the gesture in amazement.

‘The second rule is that I don’t allow you to have any kind of overly sensual or sexual touch with anyone else unless you have my explicit, clear permission. And Felix, I don’t give you that permission tonight. Even if you’re curious, you’re here strictly as my shadow and an observer. If anything happens, it will be between the two of us, and the two of us only, do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ I said, fully awake, and almost all the strands of that Clock of Eclipses memory gone, weaker than old cobwebs.

‘The third rule is that likewise, you are _never_ to touch any shadow – claimed or unclaimed – without their permission. And the fourth rule is that you call me Sir, but you do not call _anyone else_ by that honorific. Because they are not your flame. Do you understand, Felix?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ I said.

‘Repeat the rules back to me.’

I did, even showing him the gesture that he’d showed me. He nodded in satisfaction, then opened the brougham door and gestured for someone to come over.

A young man approached holding a document and a quill, looking at me with open curiosity. Murtagh looked over the document briefly, then handed it to me.

‘Thank you, Thomas. Felix, read that, and if you’re amenable, sign it.’

I nodded, but was still looking at the young man. He wore all black, and he had a collar around his neck with two metal pendants hanging from it. One was the shape of a flame, though a different colour to the amber one hanging from my neck. The other looked like a circle with a spiral in the centre. He was young, but he wasn’t a child, nor even a teenager. His hair was shiny and thick, like it was well looked after and not simply oiled for the shine.

I turned to the document and realised with some amazement that it was a confidentiality waiver. Some of the language went beyond what I could grasp, so intricate was the legal wording, but the gist of it was that I was not to reveal anyone’s identity here. There was also a chain of people I was to report to if anyone abused the protocol.

‘Sir, are these real?’ I said. ‘These consequences? If someone touches me without my permission?’

‘Of course,’ Murtagh said. ‘The thing is, Felix, when a shadow and flame enter into a relationship with one another, or an agreement, of course you will do things you do not always wish to do. But it is always with a view to never harming you outright, or giving you more than you can handle. It is a relationship of mutual respect and care. You respect that I will look after you and give me your obedience, and I respect you by making sure no untoward harm comes to you, and cherishing that obedience while guiding you through the light and dark of what we do together.

‘But what of that do you have with anyone else here? You’ve agreed to nothing with them, and no, simply coming here is not a form of agreement. I don’t know how it was done in Melusine, but I suspect it was different?’

‘Quite,’ I said softly, staring down at the contract.

‘Well. Corambis doesn’t get everything right, as St Vanhalie more than demonstrated. And certainly, I’ve made my mistakes with you as well. But Gisela and Keane are proud of this little haven, and I hope you will come to see that if there’s any harm I’ve done to you, it’s in spite of their training and not because of it.’

I nodded, finished reading the contract, then signed it. Murtagh handed it back to Thomas, who walked off speedily, presumably into the Copse.

‘Come along then, Felix,’ Murtagh said.

‘What about your contract, Sir?’ I said.

‘You only ever sign it once,’ he said. ‘I signed mine years ago.’

He stepped out of the brougham, then held out his hand like he might to a lady. I took it, and he helped me out, then handed me my walking stick, one hand on the small of his back.

I looked around in amazement at the tunnel. What had at first felt like the strangeness of the basement where the Clock of Eclipses resided – which I’d later learned was beneath the Hall of the Seven Virtues where I’d first met Kay – was instead a neat, paved entryway with glowing lights near stairs – only four steps – into an already open door. There were other carriages around, and clean, fresh hay for the horses along one of the walls.

We walked up the steps and I masked my nervousness, acutely aware of the collar around my neck. Most of the other people wearing collars dressed all in black, and I squinted at Murtagh once we entered.

‘You didn’t tell me about the dress code,’ I hissed under my breath.

‘Sir,’ Murtagh reminded me quietly.

‘Sir,’ I echoed, closing my eyes. I didn’t want to forget. Not here.

‘You may dress however you like, Felix,’ Murtagh said. ‘If I required it, I would have told you.’

I was led through a wide corridor with an old run of once-luxurious red carpet over the wooden floorboards. The wallpapered walls were golden, a pattern of leaves and flowers and vines, though the building had clearly aged, it was much loved and clean.

I could hear the sounds of the same kinds of debauchery I was familiar with in the Shining Tiger. But they were also sounds that I now associated with my time with Murtagh, and even as I twitchily looked in the direction of a muffled strike followed by a short shriek somewhere beyond the corridor, Murtagh’s hand reached for mine and grasped it tightly.

I looked down at him, and he looked up at me with a serious, grave expression. He was aware of me, watching out for my reactions, perhaps worried himself for bringing me to a place like this. Whatever he was trying to communicate when he looked at me that way, it helped, and I took a deep breath and sighed it out.

No one here could touch me without my permission. He wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t true. That alone turned the training of my childhood on its head. Though perhaps Lorenzo would have said people couldn’t touch me without paying, it never had anything to do with my _permission._

We passed one large open room, the lights dim, the door open. Within, a young woman on a raised platform that looked like it was covered in leather. She was strapped down and sheened with sweat. Her mouth open, her eyes closed. Hot wax poured onto her breast, another woman holding a candle, standing over her with a fascinated look on her face. As I slowed, another woman walked towards them both and reached out and adjusted the height of the candle.

‘You can pour from a lower angle than this,’ she said. ‘You won’t burn her. You’re being safe. Remember to monitor her and how she’s receiving it, or you’ll smother her with your own desires.’

The woman holding the candle nodded, then reached out and stroked the shadow’s hair. I never saw the response as we passed the room, but I realised that when Murtagh spoke of flames being trained and taking lessons, he didn’t mean… He didn’t mean a group of men simply standing around and jeering each other on while they whipped a child almost to death.

Strangely, instead of making me feel safer, it made me feel like I belonged even less. Murtagh looked at me a couple of times, then drew me aside into a small, empty sitting room.

‘What is it, Felix?’ he said.

‘Melusine had nothing like this, Sir,’ I said. ‘It’s novel.’

‘Yet you look rather unhappy about it.’

‘I’m not sure I belong here,’ I said, then smiled tightly. ‘I’ll be fine, of course, for whatever you wish, Sir.

Murtagh watched me, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. I didn’t know how to communicate my discomfort, because it was nothing to do with the Copse, which clearly was trying to do its best in the same way that St Vanhalie had been trying to do its best by its clients. While I occasionally heard the sounds of shadows suffering, I could tell the quality wasn’t the same as what I’d heard in the Shining Tiger; or the sounds I’d made myself in sheer desperation to escape the agony of what was happening.

‘You know, Felix,’ Murtagh said, walking up to me until he could slide his hands up and down my waist. ‘There’s no shame in wishing that things had been different when you were younger, or still finding a place for all of this alongside your own experiences. And you’re tired. I’m taking us to a private room. The events and performances and scenes will continue throughout the weekend. I was just looking for Gisela and Keane. I’m not expecting you to be on display like these people. Not tonight, anyway. Perhaps one day.’

I was relieved to hear about the private room, and stuck on the idea that I wished things were different. Of course that was true, I’d wished that all my life. But here I could see how things _could_ have been different.

‘There’s no children,’ I said softly. ‘There’s no children here, Sir.’

Murtagh’s face became raw. He took that last step and folded his arms around me. And then a hand was at my head, fingers in my hair and his palm over my scalp. He bent me towards him, and I had no choice but to put my head on his shoulder.

‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s no children.’

‘I just…don’t really understand,’ I said, hating the way I sounded. ‘People desire children. They’re vulnerable and easy to hurt. Surely flames would be drawn to them.’

‘No,’ Murtagh said, ‘because it means so much more with a fellow adult who fully understands what you mean to do with them, and they wish to be consumed anyway. Even if they don’t like the method, even if they suffer, they suffer as an adult.’

‘I really thought- But literally no one, that I can tell. Even the servants aren’t children.’

‘My little rabbit, you’re so tired, aren’t you?’ Murtagh said, his voice rich with sympathy. I pressed my face into his neck and breathed deeply.

Corambis _was_ different. It still had corruption within it, I knew that for a fact, having experienced Edwin’s ‘ritual’ to reawaken the Clock of Eclipses. It still had its crime, it still had its petty criminals – those who were politicians and those who weren’t. But Corambis was different. It had baked a different set of morals into its foundations, and it had learned from the days of Mulkists and formed itself into something different. And Murtagh, of all people, was a part of that. He was the Duke of Murtagh, a member of the Convocation, protector of Esmer, and no doubt one of the reasons that places like the Copse could exist in the first place.

I wanted to tell him that I was grateful for him, but the melancholic mood wouldn’t leave.

We stayed there for long minutes, and my sense of fragility eased into something quieter, muted. I didn’t want to leave. In another room nearby, I heard a burst of laughter from a group of people, and it didn’t sound malicious or mean. It sounded like someone had made a joke, and others were enjoying themselves.

Eventually Murtagh drew me on again into a quiet lounge. I blinked in surprise when I saw Virtuer Ashmead standing by a bookshelf, in a three piece suit far fancier than what he wore in the day to day – obviously the clothing of a flame, not a shadow – talking to another man who wore an all-white suit that complimented a long flowing mane of black hair.

My relationship with Ashmead seemed to make a lot more sense, as though I could finally see why I’d gravitated to him for so long, why I’d felt safer and more protected around him than other Virtuers. It wasn’t only because he was the Dean – it wasn’t like Stephen Teverius ever inspired the same feelings in me – but because he had that same mettle that made him a flame that Murtagh had.

Murtagh drew us over, and I thought it was to visit Ashmead, who only did one tiny double take before smiling warmly at me. But instead Murtagh apologised for interrupting, then he and the other man in the white suit swiftly embraced, thumping each other on the backs.

‘Keane, I’d like you to meet Felix.’

‘Ah yes,’ Keane said, looking me over with an indulgent smile. His black eyes were impenetrable, and I realised he was one of the co-owners of the entire establishment. He radiated a different kind of power to Murtagh, one that felt lazier and – even though I’d only known him for less than a minute – somehow more sadistic. Perhaps because I knew he invented and owned that blindfold with the spikes that rested over the eyes, and that Murtagh had borrowed it directly from him. ‘The foreigner. He is lovely, isn’t he?’

He stepped towards me, reached out to take my arm or my hand, I wasn’t sure which. I stepped back hurriedly, holding up my hand and feeling dread that I was even rejecting the _owner._ Keane, to my amazement, simply stopped and shook his head with something like mild regret.

‘Well, I don’t blame you,’ Keane said, beaming at me. Then he looked me up and down with a gaze that still managed to make me feel stripped naked all the same. He tilted his head at me, his smile both an appraisal and approval. ‘So you’re the one that finally made Ferrand settle down with a shadow? Can’t say I’m surprised. It’s a pleasure to see you here. If you have any problems at all, please flag me or Gisela. Murtagh can be a brute.’

‘Oh, _ha_ ,’ Murtagh said, staring at him. ‘What about you, Keane?’

‘I’m a sadist through and through, and have never pretended to be otherwise,’ Keane said, with his cat-like smile. ‘But shadows know what they’re getting into when they play with me.’

I appreciated his honesty, and where similar patrons of the Shining Tiger might have tried to cow me with their sadism, Keane only smiled in a way that suggested he wasn’t even planning to accost me later.

I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

I looked at Ashmead helplessly, unsure what the etiquette was here. But he only smiled, not like a predator, but like a friend.

‘He means it,’ Ashmead said. ‘If you ever need any help, that’s what the Copse is for. It’s a pleasant surprise to see you here.’

‘I might say the same,’ I said quietly, moving closer to him. I could sense Murtagh’s eye on me, but he was still talking to Keane about something to do with politics, and I appreciated the break from being taken through the newness of the Copse. ‘Now that I think about it, this explains a lot.’

‘Does it?’ Ashmead said, smiling again, though his eyes were sharper than ever. ‘In truth I’m extremely secretive about being a flame, moreso than many of the others of high station, in that I take no relationships outside of the Copse. I only really let myself explore here at the Copse, where the waiver is active.’

‘Have you known long?’ I said. ‘That you’re a flame?’

‘Since I was twenty. Some friends at the Institution introduced me to the concept. Dear Sheldon thought I might have been a shadow, bless his soul. But no, it didn’t work out that way. Poor fellow.’

‘You don’t seem surprised to see me here.’

‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘There was always something about you, Felix, that required more… Ah, let’s just say it was a feeling if you will. There are some that you can’t help but wonder if they’d benefit from a flame, even if they don’t know they’re a shadow, and I wondered such about you.’

I felt strangely flustered around him. I remembered how much he’d looked out for me when I had the binding by obedience placed upon me. I remembered him refusing to hurt me like that again. He’d always had a way of firmly taking me in hand and he was the very reason I’d been given a job at the Institution in the first place, and now the reason I was going to be allowed to return.

It was a shock to realise that I’d always felt a bit of a shadow around him, but that it had never been sexual. At least, not on my side. But it was quite something to be sheltered by his hand, guided by his knowledge. It went beyond the normal relationship between mentor and mentee.

‘Oh,’ I said finally, stupidly, unsure what to think.

Ashmead looked a little sympathetic. ‘Trust me, it’s not obvious. I think there’s something that flames – especially experienced flames – can pick up, in the same way that shadows can often sense a flame. I wouldn’t know how to explain it.’

‘And you don’t think it’s controversial for you to be here? As a wizard and a flame?’

Keane looked at me sharply then, and I realised from the expressions of Murtagh and Ashmead, that I’d said something provocative without realising.

‘I apologise,’ I said hastily, but Ashmead only waved a hand.

‘No, no, you don’t know any better,’ he said, confirming the fact that I had well and truly stepped in it. ‘It’s not controversial to be here, though I admit that shadows who are also wizards tend to avoid me, and I can’t say I blame them. There are two schools of thought. The majority of people simply don’t care, and some are too young to remember the Mulkists in the first place. Then there are those who think wizards shouldn’t be allowed into flame-and-shadow play in the first place. They feel more strongly about wizard flames, than shadows, but their feelings are still strong. There’s a couple here tonight. They’re always very civil, but we have the waiver for a reason.’

‘We eject anyone who does any untoward harm,’ Keane said eventually. ‘Wizard or otherwise. We have far more problems with those that lack magic, because the wizards have the history of the Mulkists behind them and it makes them err, if anything, towards paranoia and over-caution. But I suppose you wouldn’t know anything about that.’

Except, I realised, I had once been a Mulkist by their definition, enslaving Mildmay to me through the obligation d’ame. Forcing a mental binding upon him that made him a plaything to my whims, whether I was making him follow me, work for me, murder for me, hit me…

‘I see,’ I said.

Murtagh’s fingers at the small of my back took only slight hold of my attention. I suspected I should be having a better time than I was having, especially given no one was hurting me or even attempting to, but…

‘Well,’ I said. ‘I apologise again for bringing it up so boldly.’

I felt my height. I was the tallest one in the room and I wanted to very much not be here. This wasn’t like performing in the Mirador. It wasn’t even like being the shy, timid, kittenish thing Lorenzo had wanted me to be for patrons.

I was tired, I was questioning how much I belonged here. I wasn’t accustomed to feeling like some backwoods country boy, not since Malkar had dropped me off at the Mirador and left me there to fend for myself among the wolves when I was barely an adult. And these weren’t even wolves, and that was part of what was so confusing.

Murtagh excused the both of us, and then he took us out of the lounge and down another corridor. The building was huge, perhaps even had encroached into other buildings on either side of it over the years.

We must have reached the other side of the building, judging by the double doors and the counter by what was clearly a sitting room. There, a curvy, tawny-skinned woman was talking with some authority over the different sensations that different leathers might create in a shadow, to another woman, and holding up different floggers for her to look at. A glass cabinet of tools was open next to her. I looked away instantly, because while Murtagh had used a flogger on me and I hadn’t died, or been scarred, I still didn’t want to be around them.

‘Oh, Ferrand!’ the woman said. ‘You made it! And I see you’ve brought a guest!’ her voice was full and resonant. There was something regal about her. She sent the other woman on her way with both floggers and came over. Unlike Keane, she didn’t try to touch me at all. ‘My, but you do look tired,’ she said to me. ‘I mean no offense of course. You’re stunning. Ferrand, have you been putting him through his paces?’

‘He’s come down from Grimglass,’ Murtagh said. ‘Today.’

She gave him a _look,_ which was so fondly exasperated, I thought of Isobel and felt a hint of laughter in my lungs, though I was too tired to laugh aloud.

‘He needs _rest,_ you idiot,’ she said. ‘You could have waited until next Savato. I hope you’re not here for some kind of public display. Poor thing looks scared out of his wits.’

Did I? I was certain I’d been doing a good job of masking it.

‘Oh, don’t worry dear,’ she said, like she’d heard my thoughts. ‘You look perfectly indifferent to people who can’t tell the difference. Unfortunately for you, it’s my job to know when a shadow’s distressed. Your shoulders are _ever_ so tense. Now, actually while I’ve got you here, why haven’t you requested a catalogue from our publishing house at Kora! Darling, we have so many books I’m sure you’d love.’

‘Ah,’ I said, looking at Murtagh quickly. ‘I’ve been starting to send out for catalogues, but-’

‘I’ll get one out to you. We can give you a discount. As for you, Ferrand, be _careful_ with your shadows, for the sake of the Holy Lady at least, if not for mine.’

‘He’s fine,’ Murtagh said, only slightly defensive.

‘Mmhm,’ she said, looking me over once more. ‘That boy needs to go to bed. Your cock will survive another twelve hours.’

I smiled in spite of myself and she grinned at me. I decided I liked her. She was still intimidating, and seeing her talk so easily about floggers set my teeth on edge, but she had a different quality to her than Keane. I believed that they both cared about the Copse, but I thought that perhaps if I went to Gisela about an issue, she’d really listen to me.

But perhaps Keane would too, it was just hard to judge someone who wore his need to consume others so openly.

‘You know I’ve hired a room,’ Murtagh said.

‘Then _go_ to it,’ she said, reaching out and shoving him lightly on the shoulder. ‘We’ve got events all day tomorrow. There’s plenty of time.’ She turned to me. ‘Please don’t take this as me dismissing you, love, but one of Murtagh’s many flaws is that he sometimes doesn’t take into account the physical wear and tear being consumed can have on a shadow. And it sounds like you’ve had a long day! I’d love to talk to you properly, but that can wait until tomorrow, okay?’

‘I can assure you, I’m neither fragile nor unable to handle whatever Murtagh wants of me,’ I said, staring levelly at her. She lifted her eyebrows at me, then looked sidelong at Murtagh.

‘You’re perfect for each other, then, aren’t you?’

‘All right, all right,’ Murtagh said, laughing. ‘Well, you’re not wrong, Gisela. And you? Do you have much planned tonight?’

Her smile was wicked, her brown eyes gleamed. ‘Thomas is all mine for the evening. I’ll be demonstrating some of the finer points of knife work. Oh, I know,’ she said, taking in the alarm I must have shown at the word ‘knife.’ ‘It sounds so alarming. But Thomas has taken to it like a duck to water, and he’s eager, if a little concerned to be before a crowd. But Thomas has that sweet combination of shyness and needing to perform once he’s before people. Perhaps you’ll see him tomorrow if you like. If he’s not too tired after I’m through with him tonight, anyway.’

She looked towards a clock on the wall and then made a small sound.

‘I always spend too long talking about gear with people! I must be off. Good evening, you two. Make sure Ferrand lets you _sleep!’_

And then it was the two of us, by display cabinets showing all manner of tools and equipment of the kind that Murtagh generally kept in his pack.

‘There,’ Murtagh said softly. ‘Come along, little rabbit. The worst for tonight is over.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ I said. We walked behind a front counter that looked like it was for receiving guests from the front of the building. There, one more corridor, this one plainer and homelier. Murtagh led me through a black door, and the room was set up almost like a hotel room. Except that there were sturdy metal hooks in the ceiling, and lengths of rope on a dresser. On a shelf in front of a painting of a man clearly in the throes of agony or ecstasy, was a line of what had to be glass dildos, side by side, and exquisitely made.

_Well,_ I thought.

‘Sit down on the bed, Felix,’ Murtagh ordered without even looking at me.

I did with some relief, taking the pressure off my leg and leaning the walking stick against the mattress. He walked around the room checking everything and then stretched, yawning loudly. When he was done, he looked at me.

‘You do look tired,’ he said.

He walked over to the bed, nudging my legs apart with his knee. He stepped between them easily and touched his fingers to the underside of my jaw, tilting my face upwards. He bent down and pressed his lips to mine, then kissed me. He had a way about him which was so thoroughly possessive, even when he was being gentle. He led the kiss, he was the one who pressed his tongue between my lips when he wanted my mouth to open, he was the one who held my head at the angle he wanted.

I thought of how I used to do this with others, how good it had felt at the time. But it was so easy, so natural, to let Murtagh take control like this. I’d enjoyed being a tarquin – in a destructive, horrendous kind of way – and I’d never really liked being a martyr. Even back then, I saw how it suited me as I loathed it all the same.

But with Murtagh, it felt like coming home.

‘I didn’t expect it to affect you so much,’ Murtagh said against the corner of my mouth. ‘But in retrospect, I shouldn’t be surprised. You don’t talk of Malkar often, but whenever you’ve mentioned his name, it makes my skin crawl that someone hurt you so badly.’

‘I couldn’t even begin to tell you, Sir,’ I said, after a minute of thinking about how to talk about it. I wished I could lay the past open for him, so he could see it. A few minutes of gentle kissing, and I was willing to carve myself apart for him.

‘I know,’ he said.

‘No one knows all of it, Sir,’ I said. ‘No one.’

Murtagh pressed his forehead against mine, his hand coming up and curving over the back of my head. ‘I’m sorry, Felix.’

‘But even then, Sir,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t thoughts of Malkar that had me on the back foot. It was Lorenzo who trained me for the Shining Tiger when I was a child. And my Keeper before him, who trained me for Lorenzo, and I suspect, for his own selfish desires. All of you have always loved having the odd-eyed, red-haired foreigner on his knees. It doesn’t matter whether I’m a child or an adult.’

My smile was bittersweet, and Murtagh sat beside me, slinging an arm around my shoulders. I realised with a strange combination of despair and relief, that perhaps we weren’t going to do anything this evening.

‘You’ve always seen me as one of them, haven’t you?’ Murtagh said quietly.

‘Not as an insult, Sir,’ I said. ‘And you’re different in many ways. I can extol those to you if you need to hear them.’

‘I’m not that insecure. At least not right now. But then, I’ve never been interested in fucking and torturing children, so it’s not hard to feel like I have something of the higher ground, here.’

I smiled tiredly, and he gently tugged me into his side until I was leaning against him. This whole place stirred something dark and sad within me, I was unaccustomed to it.

‘Sir, I sometimes wish you could have seen me at my best in the Mirador,’ I said. ‘Powerful and important, not whatever I’ve become now.’

‘Holy Lady, _what_ are you talking about? You destroyed the Automaton of Corybant. You saved Kay’s life, and – may I add – nearly all of Caloxa. I know you have very good reasons for believing that it’s weakness to be a shadow, but it’s _not_. I want you because you’re strong, wilful, stubborn, witty and intelligent. Not because you’re _weak._ You think you’re not powerful and important here?’

‘Places like this…remind me of what I came from, Sir,’ I said. ‘What I really am.’

‘And what are you _really?’_

I closed my eyes. I didn’t have a clear answer for him. Small and wretched. Some street rat fit only for drowning repeatedly, and later, fucking.

‘I have skills very few people know about,’ I said quietly. ‘For example, I know the food that will be safest to eat in a pile of refuse. And I know – if I’m stealing clothing – what will be warmest, and what merely looks warm. I was worth nothing, Sir. For most of my life. Not until Malkar found me. And even he knew I was worth nothing, but could simply be made _useful_. It’s hard not to see that as the truth. I know…on some level that it’s not. Of course I know. Because I see Mildmay as my mirror, and he believes himself worthless because his Keeper trained him to feel like he was worthless and dependent on her for praise. And I know how wonderful he is. And yet…’

‘You were treated that way by people who owed you better,’ Murtagh said gruffly. ‘Of course you’d believe it.’

I pulled back and looked at him, surprised at how easily he’d said it. Surprised that he hadn’t simply told me I was wrong for thinking the way that I did.

‘You can’t learn the truth from a pack of liars,’ Murtagh said. ‘You can’t learn how to be a man from beasts.’

‘Sir, I have been a beast too,’ I said. ‘One of the worst. And, depending on the mood one finds me in, I can still be one.’

‘Well,’ Murtagh said. ‘In that case, so have I. Perhaps I mean monsters, then. These people in your life, Felix, they found and exploited you as a child, they made you carry all the shame and guilt of it, so they didn’t have to. It’s sleight of hand that convinces you to shoulder something that doesn’t belong to you. But when that sleight of hand is reinforced with rape and torture, of course you’ll shoulder it. You had to survive somehow. You had to believe what they told you. But, Felix, Corambis isn’t where you grew up. And the Copse isn’t the Shining Tiger.’

‘I think that’s the problem, Sir,’ I said, smiling to myself. ‘I think that’s what makes it so hard.’

‘You’re realising that it could have been different,’ Murtagh said hesitantly.

‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly. ‘But it hurts some part of me to be here, Sir. Not in the sense that I feel I should run and never come back. But…it still hurts.’

‘May I just say that I have waited months – no, _years_ – to hear you talking to me like this. With such candour. I never thought you’d trust me enough.’

‘Or anyone, for that matter,’ I added.

‘Will you tell me about Malkar?’ he said.

‘Oh, well,’ I said, sighing. ‘Sometimes it feels like everyone knows about Malkar. It’s a very sordid story, Sir.’

‘We have time. You can tell me whatever you wish. I’ve wanted to hear all of it, and I know that frightened you in the beginning. I can’t say I blame you, given everything you’ve experienced.’

‘And the singular experience of having a flame look at you with that expression on their face, Sir,’ I said, ‘which means that you just want to get your claws into me.’

We ended up scooting back on the bed until we were resting on the pillows. I grabbed one of the bolster cushions and put it under my knee, taking some of the strain off the injured calf. I turned towards Murtagh, thinking that it was so strange to lie like this in a place made for fucking and torment and the relationships between shadows and flames.

But maybe this was part of it, since Murtagh wasn’t behaving like we were doing anything out of the ordinary. He wasn’t even behaving like he was put out.

‘I’m not sure how to tell this story, Sir,’ I said.

‘Say it however you want. In whatever order you want. As much as you want, or as little.’

I looked into his amber eyes and knew he meant it. ‘You are a rare creature, Sir,’ I said quietly. ‘I know you want everything.’

‘Tonight I just want to listen to you,’ he said.

And so, haltingly, hesitantly, I started to talk about Malkar. About the time he bought me from the Shining Tiger. About his manor out in the country, and the magical traps on all the rooms I was never supposed to enter. About the arbitrary punishments, always enforced with magic. About the sex, which I was frequently forced to enjoy – magically, if nothing else worked – even when I was bleeding and screaming in agony. About being loaned out to different men as ‘payment’ and being reminded that no matter how good I was at magic, I was never anything more than a whore.

It took longer than I thought it would. Long enough that we stopped so Murtagh could fetch me some water. Long enough that I stopped calling him Sir, and Murtagh never chastised me for it. I told him things I’d never breathed to a living soul. Things that cast my entire being into the pits of shame. Like the time Malkar wanted to experiment with sex magic and the dead – using me in the experiment – because he didn’t believe in heretical magic; or rather, treated it as a compass that pointed him where he needed to go.

I didn’t cry. It wasn’t that kind of story. It was heavy and awful, but it was also old and dusty, like shaking out an ugly, wounded tapestry that I hated to see. It didn’t make me feel like shedding tears, it made me so exhausted to contemplate that I wanted to die thinking of it.

And I talked about how Malkar had come back into my life, and the Virtu, Malkar raping me to destroy that sacred stone, and the subsequent insanity when he cursed me, followed by my time at St Crellifer’s. I talked about killing him, too late to save Mildmay from his clutches. I talked about the fact that he was hundreds of years old, while Murtagh stared at me with wide eyes, sheened with tears, not even ashamed of them.

Because while I didn’t cry, Murtagh had twice pressed his face into my shoulder and listened, and I’d felt the material of my shirt get wet.

I wound down when my throat was scratchy and I was too tired to continue.

‘There’s more,’ I said.

‘There’s always going to be more,’ he said. ‘He had you for so long.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And I suppose, there are some stories that aren’t worth telling.’

‘No,’ he said, pushing up and looking at me. ‘That, I’ll never believe. I want you, I want those stories. I want the truth of you Felix. How you can lay there and say everything you just did, and not see your strength or your mettle, and yet, of course I know why you can’t see it, after someone like that. You were the pet and plaything of a monster. We have… We have stories too, you see, of Mulkists and what they did to their wizard slaves. They were always tragic, Felix. Always.’

‘Well,’ I said, sighing.

‘I love you,’ Murtagh said, staring at me.

A long delay, far too long as I realised what he’d said and the import of those words. I felt my eyes widen, a shred of wakefulness intruding on my tired mind.

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

‘I love you,’ Murtagh said. ‘I have since St Vanhalie. Well, tell a lie, I probably have for months. But I _realised_ at St Vanhalie. You marched into that place like a hero, saved my brother from the dead, and delivered him back to me. Is there a way to petition to make you into a Saint? I’d do it.’

‘Stop it,’ I said weakly. ‘But, Murtagh. I know- I know your theology, I know that-’

‘Oh trust me, I know it too,’ Murtagh said. ‘I know it better than _you_ , little rabbit. I love you. I don’t just enjoy our time together. I don’t only like fucking you. I love you, you daft wizard. I don’t care what our theology says about it.’

I lay there, stunned. I’d heard the words from Mildmay, I’d heard them from Gideon. I’d heard the phrase from countless men who I’d fucked who didn’t love me at all. I’d heard it from older men in the Shining Tiger who mocked me with those words while they made me cry as they split me open on their cocks. I’d heard the words in almost every way it was possible to hear them.

Ferrand made the words new again. He said them stubbornly and easily, like it was obvious to all.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘it’s all right if you don’t return the feeling. Not that I’d really understand why, since I have it on good authority that I’m quite a find.’

‘Isobel would never say that,’ I said helplessly, and then we both laughed at the same time. ‘I stopped calling you Sir.’

‘You hate it, outside of scenes,’ Ferrand said. ‘I keep meaning to revisit it, and I always forget. As long as you say it out in the main rooms of the Copse, and in our scenes – I’ll always be happy to ‘remind’ you – I don’t care.’

‘I also love you,’ I said.

Ferrand smiled at me like he’d known all along, but then he leaned over me and kissed me with a fervency that suggested he hadn’t known at all. I reached up with tired arms and dropped them onto his back, pulling him closer, and he ended up half-laying on top of me, his tongue in my mouth, one of his legs moving between mine.

‘I knew just before St Vanhalie,’ I said. ‘And then resolved to never tell you.’

‘So you knew before me, did you?’ Ferrand drawled. ‘Well. You’re smarter than I am. At least in some things.’

‘Will Isobel mind?’

‘ _Mind?_ She’ll be happy,’ he said. ‘I know it will take some time for you to understand the nature of our relationship, but she’ll be relieved, and she’ll be pleased. I love Isobel, nothing about my relationship with you takes away from that. But likewise, I love you, and nothing about my relationship with her takes away from that either. You’ll know it in time. In years, when we’re still seeing each other, and you’re practically part of the family. Why, by then, I’m sure you’ll have some cats in the lighthouse, thanks to Clovis.’

‘Adelais likes cats,’ I said, as Ferrand kissed my cheek and then bit at my eyebrow, his teeth scraping over the skin gently but possessively.

‘I’m going to _ruin_ you tomorrow,’ he said breathlessly. I shivered beneath him, glared at him half-heartedly when he looked down at me with a smug, annoying expression on his face. ‘But we’re going to sleep first.’

‘You really listen to them, don’t you? Gisela and Keane.’

‘I try,’ Ferrand said. ‘But the fact is that it’s your first day in Esmer after years of being away, and now is not the time. You tried to tell me when you arrived, and I would have ignored you. That’s my failing, not yours. You would do whatever I wanted, just about, you want to please me so badly.’

‘Oh yes,’ I said, yawning softly. ‘I seem to recall that’s exactly what you said when I decided to go to St Vanhalie against your orders.’

He poked me gently in the shoulder and then lay on his chest alongside me, one leg still hooked over mine. I could feel the whole world slowing down. Occasionally I heard footsteps above us. Though I’d not seen any stairs, I was sure it was a two storey building. The floorboards were old and they creaked. Every other sound was muffled.

‘You love me,’ I said to myself, the words almost nonsensical. ‘Really?’

‘It’s so easy to love you, Felix,’ Ferrand muttered tiredly into the pillow, and then he fell asleep, while I lay there with my eyes open.

No one had said that to me in my life.

Those seven words felt like a plaster over a wound so giant and gaping, it still hurt. But they were a plaster nonetheless.

_It’s so easy to love you._

I turned to face him, then watched him as I fell asleep, which happened far faster than I expected given how my mind reeled at his easy love.


	24. Lightstruck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello! I've bumped Beast to the top of my priority list right now, so I'm hoping to have it finished before the end of 2020 so that you're not all waiting until like February or w/e for the end of the story. We're so close! 
> 
> Tags for this chapter: Chemical play, plug, voyeurism, (mild) exhibitionism, public play (not directly involving Felix and Murtagh), sounding (penis plug), retrograde ejaculation (coitus saxonicus), clamps, dubious consent (we get a ‘no’ from Felix, as we often do when sounds are involved, but as always, it’s still something Felix is very much willingly participating in), heavy subspace.

_Murtagh_

*

I woke early, turned in the comfortable bed – though not as comfortable as the one at Carey House – and saw Felix so deeply asleep that his mouth was open and he was faintly snoring on every inhale. It shouldn’t have made me feel as fond as it did.

I wasn’t surprised he was so exhausted and I was angry at myself for not realising it sooner. I hadn’t quite realised how the trip would impact him, because he concealed so much of his fatigue when we travelled to St Vanhalie – likely because he correctly suspected I would call the whole thing off if I saw how tired he was. Even now he still had circles under his eyes. But he’d been distressed the previous evening, I’d never seen him like that, so raw and lost.

What he’d told me about Malkar went beyond what he’d sketched out for the Circle, it went beyond anything I could imagine, a story of an immortal callous man who couldn’t die until Felix burned him to death. Whose many crimes against Felix went far beyond the physical into reaches of magical violation I could only barely grasp, and even then, the idea of Felix going through any of it was like taking a knife to my own soul. While Felix related his stories mostly tear-free, I hadn’t stayed unaffected at all.

I didn’t know how I’d ever think about those stories without feeling a tightening in my chest, a straining in the back of my throat.

I eased out of the bed – Felix didn’t respond at all – and walked into the bathroom. I showered and woke up slowly, thinking that the man I loved was sharing a bed with me, and he loved me in turn. I liked how simply it fell together in my head. I kept waiting for my spiritual crisis and it didn’t come. It was as though the Holy Lady and I had reached an accord. I didn’t even feel guilt or remorse. I didn’t feel that I had suddenly become an atheist, or was dismissing my religion.

But perhaps in realising that Corambis was far from perfect, I was coming to see that maybe those imperfections were in everything. Perhaps not in the Holy Lady Herself, but certainly in the translations of her teachings.

When I returned to the room, Felix was still fast asleep, still snoring gently. I didn’t have the heart to wake him, so I pressed the button that would summon a servant, and opened the door so that the knock wouldn’t wake Felix.

An older shadow dressed in black – a woman I knew by the name of Therese – came within minutes. I wasn’t surprised that Thomas wasn’t there, I suspected Gisela had worn him through the previous night.

‘Can you organise some breakfast, and a list of who’s performing in what rooms today?’

‘Of course, Your Grace,’ she said, before disappearing.

She returned with a written list, told me that breakfast would be arriving soon, then bobbed a sweet curtsey and headed back down the corridor. I stayed in the doorway and perused the list.

As much as I thought Gisela’s style of consumption would suit Felix as an observer, I didn’t think he was ready to watch women tormenting men just yet, not after what he’d experienced during the Clock of Eclipses. I knew now that one of the things he found most traumatising about that experience wasn’t just that he was gang raped by men for a magical ritual – after all, sadly this was nowhere near the first time he’d experienced such a thing – but that he was raped by a woman as well. I thought he could come around to just watching Gisela work in time, but not today.

Keane was out of the question. I loved watching Keane work, but he was cruel, and he was laconic in a way that I suspected might remind Felix of Malkar. Keane was incredibly attentive when it came to caring for his shadows both before and after scenes, but during the performances and displays and teachings, his shadows _hurt,_ and sometimes badly, for a prolonged period of time. I didn’t see Felix being able to distinguish that from torture, and Keane kept most of his aftercare private, so Felix wouldn’t get the benefit of knowing the shadow was cherished.

Which was a shame, really, because I’d had the privilege to play with Keane a couple of times as two flames sharing two shadows, and it was like taking a masterclass in perception and understanding the psychological needs of both the flame and the shadow, and how they danced together. Perhaps I needed to come back to the Copse to spend some more time with Keane again.

Cunningham was working over a shadow by the name of Temerrin, which sounded like a Caloxan name. I liked Cunningham’s work, and that session would begin in a couple of hours. Plenty of time to have breakfast and wake Felix, then get the day started.

I may have backed off last night, but I had no plans of doing so today.

For if Felix loved me, then he was going to love me as a shadow loved a flame.

*

Breakfast came covered by two cloches, one platter with hot food, and one with a cold selection of breads, jams and savoury spreads. I left everything on the side counter, closed and locked the door, and went back to bed, easing onto the mattress.

I stroked Felix’s hair, luxuriating in how thick and rich it was, paying attention to the white streak that grew out from the front of his hairline. I envied the fact that he didn’t seem to have grey hairs anywhere else, no, only a flashy white streak. My own hair was shot through with plenty of silver, I was lucky I was blond.

Felix roused slowly, with small twitches at first, his fingers and hands moving beneath the bed. His eyes darted behind his eyelids. At one point it seemed as though stroking his hair was going to lull him into a deeper sleep. But then his eyelids flickered and finally opened, though he stared at nothing for long moments, and I wondered if he was fully awake, or processing his surroundings.

Then, a deep, sleepy breath and those glorious eyes opened and moved towards mine. He was sleep soft and a little befuddled, but I think he remembered where we were.

‘Mm, Sir,’ he said quietly, that airy voice of his dragged down into a deeper register from sleeping.

I found him arousing even now.

‘Good morning, my little shadow,’ I said quietly. ‘Sleep well?’

‘I did, actually. Have you been up long?’

‘A while,’ I said. ‘There’s breakfast. Though I think…I would like to be tended to first.’

I curled up a hank of his hair carefully in my hand and waited to see how he’d respond. He didn’t look at all bothered, and instead propped himself up on his elbows and moved easily beneath the sheets. There was no reluctance, no hesitation. I told myself I didn’t need the reminder that he actually liked this, liked to be with men, liked cock, but I suspected I did.

We’d start with something easy today.

His breathing was still slow with sleepiness as he nuzzled at my soft cock. And I pulled the sheets back so I could watch him – or at least the fall of his hair over my skin.

He took me into his mouth whole – easy while I was so limp – his mouth tender and wet. He shifted until he could nudge his erection against my leg. I tugged at his hair.

‘I shouldn’t have to tell you not to come, little rabbit,’ I said.

He hummed against me, and I closed my eyes. God, he was good with his mouth. I knew I was benefitting from a training that was cruel and malevolent; I knew I should care more, but in that moment I just wanted this intimacy between us.

A clever mouth, and an endless patience for how long it took to get me aroused. He didn’t force the issue, but plied me with steady, gentle attention. Whether it was long, slow sucks that didn’t hurt my soft tissue, or lifting off to nuzzle at my crinkly hair, my furred belly. His fingers stroked slowly at my inner thigh, as though he just wanted to touch the skin for its own sake.

When I pulled harder at his hair, he shuddered against me.

Eventually I became fully roused, the head of my cock a challenge to the back of his throat at this angle. I sat forward and placed two hands on his head, pushing him down into that tight space, feeling the way the inside of him clamped down against me.

‘That’s it,’ I breathed, while he couldn’t. ‘That’s lovely, Felix.’

After that, it was still slow, I still largely let him do what he wanted, but every now and then I’d push him down, or shove up into his mouth, sometimes angling towards the back of his throat and sometimes hitting the roof of it. He’d groan thickly and his legs squirmed and I knew he was resisting the urge to rub his cock against me.

I came some time later, his hair knotted up in my hands. Felix shivered into me hard enough that I thought he’d come, if it were not for the fact that I could still feel his hard cock occasionally brushing against my skin and it was no wetter than before.

He coughed politely when he pushed up afterwards, and I dragged him towards me, kissing him, licking up the taste of myself out of his mouth, bitter and thick and clinging to his tongue. He fell into me, his eyes closed, surrendering himself so beautifully that I could have grabbed him and torn him apart then and there.

When I pulled back, he licked at his lips several times and then his eyes slowly opened, and he stared up at me from beneath red eyelashes.

‘So,’ he said, his voice hoarse from his endeavours, ‘you said there was breakfast, Sir?’

I reached down and pinched up some of his ass and he yelped, but aside from tensing, his gaze was still playful, still self-satisfied.

No, he wasn’t afraid of me like he was of those older monsters. I knew he’d still have reason to fear me sometimes, and he’d still compare me to the people he’d known, but what we had was real, growing stronger all the time.

‘Go fetch us the trays then,’ I said, and Felix slid off the bed, his cock stiff and practically begging for attention. When he walked back, I stared at it, then looked at him with a half-smile on his face. ‘Don’t worry. You won’t be neglected today. You’ll probably have more than enough to deal with by the time the day is out.’

‘I’ve just realised that having you here is a bit like seeing a kid in a confectionary shop, Sir,’ Felix said, placing the trays between us and letting me lift the lids. I took a croissant and cut it in two, buttering it and handing half to Felix, eating the other half in three huge bites.

‘Yes. Also, a fair warning, while I don’t plan on fucking you in front of anyone else, I may still touch you proprietarily. You have been warned.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ Felix said, and though his tone was quiescent, his gaze turned faintly troubled. Hopefully, he would catch my meaning and be entirely on board when the time came. I did not want to spend all my time explaining to him what I could simply show him. There was no accounting for the Copse until he’d seen it for himself, there was no explaining to him that what flames did was different to how tarquins in Marathat behaved, until he experienced that consumption for himself.

We ate splendidly, and I knew it would be some time before I was ready to come again, which would be perfect for the day ahead.

I liked, also, that even though Felix had abandoned calling me Sir the night before – at least in private – he was back to saying it again this morning. I wasn’t sure why the winds blew so fickle on the term, but I trusted him to say it in public, his pride wouldn’t let him do otherwise, and that was what mattered most to me. But still, there was a part of him that yielded sweetly, and it was so lovely seeing it when he woke, knowing it was integral, not a mask donned for someone else’s pleasure.

*

I led Felix into the room where Cunningham was already working with Temerrin. Some of the seats around the centre of the room were already taken. I saw John Ashmead in the shadows, and chose the opposite side of the room so that Felix had a clear view of him. I could see that they had magnetism, instead of being threatened by it, I felt curious to know if Felix would be more or less likely to respond with Ashmead there.

Temerrin looked like an older shadow, though it was hard to tell with the blindfold. He was tied faceup to a bench with some elegant rope ties – Cunningham had always liked his ropes – and already bore the splattering of wax. He seemed calm and relaxed, which I wanted for Felix. There were several other couples sitting around, one flame already fondling her shadow, though quietly and unobtrusively.

Cunningham was focused on his shadow, not any of us, which was the way I preferred it. He bent down over Temerrin at times, whispering into his ear, or quietly stroking him or gentling him. At other times he’d remove his hands entirely and then tip the thick, fat candle and pour a stream of wax from a safe enough height. I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised to see him working with wax, given that was one of the lessons we saw last night.

Temerrin gasped as the wax hit, then writhed in his ropes, before falling still at the light, delicate touch of a hand on his chest.

‘Settle,’ Cunningham said softly. Temerrin sagged back onto the bench, his forehead sheened with sweat.

Felix and I sat on a bench side by side. I lifted a hand and placed it on Felix’s lower back. He turned and stared at me. I watched Temerrin and Cunningham, indicating that Felix should too. I didn’t really know if Felix would like this, if it would get him in any mood for anything further. I enjoyed watching others work, seeing their skills, measuring them against my own, getting ideas for activities I might be able to do in the future. It was one of the things I missed most about the Copse.

The session continued. Cunningham worked slowly, bestowing gentle affection on Temerrin in a way that didn’t suit my style at all, but obviously suited Temerrin. Between moments of being cosseted, having his hair stroked or a thumb smooth over his shoulder, wax would drip onto his belly, his chest, his nipples.

I felt Felix’s silent gasp through the hand that rested on his back, at the way Temerrin cried out when the wax spilled across his sensitive nipple. My fingers curled and I began to trace his spine, covertly looking at him. His cheeks had flushed red, his hands were resting just so in his lap, like he was forcing himself to stay still.

Ah, there, perhaps he would enjoy this as a prelude of what was to come.

I became less focused on Temerrin and Cunningham, more focused on Felix, who didn’t look away from what was happening, not even to watch Ashmead. I was distantly aware of Ashmead watching Felix at times, but dismissed it as Felix’s breathing became shallow and then uneven. I wondered what he liked most. Was he imagining himself as Temerrin? Or Cunningham? Did he get the dual thrill because he’d been both a tarquin and a martyr? Was he imagining the hot wax burning his skin without harming it?

When Cunningham finally dripped wax at the base of Temerrin’s shaved pelvis – causing Temerrin to arch and cry out sharply – Felix shuddered bodily.

Emboldened, I moved my hand to his front and placed it possessively over his cloth-covered cock. Felix jolted and stared directly at me, but I stared ahead and kept my hand in place, feeling how hard he was.

I didn’t plan on stopping. Best he learn now that it was completely normal, and best he understand that belonging to me at places like the Copse meant that I was free to do whatever I wanted even in full view of others.

Eventually, Felix slowly turned back to the scene before him, and I massaged over the fabric, feeling the shape of him trapped in his pants. Felix shifted and then fell still with the kind of resolute determination of someone who didn’t want anyone to know what I was doing.

I inched closer to him – we weren’t the only watchers engaged in this kind of foreplay, on the other side a flame was clearly bringing her shadow closer and closer to orgasm – and made a point of digging my fingers into either side of his cock through his pants. He tensed, held his breath, then shakily let it out, only for it to catch again when more wax spilled onto Temerrin’s cock.

I undid the fastening of Felix’s trousers and slipped my hand into the tight space. I curled my fingers around his sensitive skin, squeezing until his legs tensed like he was pushing down onto the floor with his feet. And when Cunningham went back to stroking and gentling Temerrin – who was gasping regularly now – I dragged my fingers casually through Felix’s pubic hair, lightly over his skin, enjoying the laziness of not having to be at the command of my own arousal while I demanded Felix’s.

It was fun mirroring Cunningham’s deliberate rise and fall. Whenever he spilled the wax, I dug my nails into Felix’s cock, or squeezed at him, or pressed too hard. When Cunningham went back to tenderness, I did the same, until Felix squirmed visibly several times and was shaking.

Half an hour later he turned towards me and then held still as my hand moved lazily over him.

‘Sir,’ he whispered, his voice barely more than air. ‘Sir, I’m… I’m… I _can’t.’_

I wasn’t surprised. He’d been hard in the morning, and he’d been hard now for nearly an hour, and I was becoming more merciless as Cunningham’s hand moved over Temerrin’s cock in between pouring the wax.

‘Shhh,’ I said.

My hand slowed, but Felix stayed trembling and keyed up, and when Temerrin came ten minutes later from a combination of wax spilling over the head of his cock and Cunningham’s hand moving over the base, Felix locked up in a way that made me wonder if he’d had to fight with himself not to spill at the same time.

A few minutes later, I withdrew my hand and did up the fastening of Felix’s pants, then guided him up and out of the room. Felix leaned on his walking stick more heavily than usual.

Ashmead followed us, leaving the door open for others to walk in. He looked at the two of us with a heavy lust in his normally sharp eyes, and I smiled. Felix wasn’t paying attention to either of us.

‘Cunningham’s work has improved,’ Ashmead said to me, then looked at Felix. ‘Did you enjoy yourself, Felix?’

‘Hm?’ Felix said, then blinked between us. Ashmead’s gaze dropped to the outline of Felix’s cock through his pants, and I watched in bemusement as Felix blushed further. ‘Oh, I apologise. Y-yes, ah, it was enlightening.’

‘It was,’ Ashmead said, smiling knowingly. His gaze darted to mine once more. ‘You two are doing no public sessions?’

‘Not this time,’ I said. ‘This one’s shy.’

Felix blinked rapidly as I dropped my hand to the curve of his ass and smoothed over it possessively. I was being entirely unfair, but Felix was a delightful mix of off-balance and harder than ever, and it was difficult not to tease.

‘Maybe next time then,’ Ashmead said. He smiled at the both of us, then looked at Felix. ‘I’ll see you at the Institution, Felix.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Felix said, his voice still caught in a higher, flustered register.

The look Ashmead directed me was the look of a flame that wanted what I had, and was willing to concede he’d lost a battle. It was fantastic.

‘Come on,’ I said to Felix, walking him back towards the front of the Copse.

Felix was silent. We didn’t go back to our rooms, but instead walked down the corridor into another I’d also reserved for the two of us.

I locked the door behind us, then turned and surveyed the room. It was fitted out largely in wooden panelling, with several pieces of furniture designed specifically for the play of shadows and flames. Felix looked around, but he didn’t look scared like he had the night before, so much as wary. It certainly looked like a room he might be tormented in, with the lengths of rope curled into circular coils, hanging from brass hooks on the wall, and the upholstered benches designed for spanking, fucking and anything else a flame might have in mind.

‘Strip,’ I said brusquely, ‘and then sit on the bench so I can look over your calf.’

‘Oh, it’s fine, you don’t-’

I spun and grabbed his jaw, my own clenching. His eyes widened as they locked on mine. ‘Little rabbit,’ I said slowly, ‘I didn’t ask for your input, I gave you two orders.’

Felix blinked at me, then nodded as much as he could within the bounds of my grip. ‘Yes, Sir.’

I let go, and he didn’t hesitate as he began to undress. He didn’t spend time folding his clothes or delaying. He simply undressed and then sat where I’d pointed, his fingers digging into his knees.

I was still looking in the cabinet of ointments. Everything I wanted was there. I turned back and knelt before Felix, ignoring the way he became visibly uncomfortable at the change in posture. He seemed to hate it whenever I positioned myself like this, and I suspected he was taught far too meanly – and incorrectly – that shadows were always meant to position themselves lower than their flames.

Even while I looked over his calf, his cock stayed erect. I was impressed with his staying power, and impressed also with the fact that the muscles that had once felt constantly cramped, were nothing like they’d been before. I’d have to get Wyatt to arrange some kind of thanks – likely a pay increase – to whoever he’d hired. That was more change than I imagined was possible. Perhaps Felix had been leaning more heavily on his walking stick before because he’d been so uncomfortably hard, or perhaps it was being dazed and not trusting himself.

It definitely wasn’t his calf, which was a relief.

‘Tell me three things you liked about watching Temerrin and Cunningham together,’ I said, as I took Felix by the shoulders and carefully manoeuvred him until he was lying on his back on the bench in a similar position to Temerrin. Felix stared up at the ceiling, then nodded, and then kept staring. He was likely fully aware that his ass was only slightly on the bench, which was because I wanted easy access to his entrance.

‘Ah,’ he said, as I adjusted the bench so that the armrests and the footrests were out and exposed. ‘The wax, Sir. I liked…when it hit and Temerrin reacted.’

‘Were you imagining yourself as Temerrin? Or Cunningham?’

‘Neither,’ Felix said with some bewilderment. ‘I was imagining what it might be like to experience such a thing myself.’

‘I can add it to the list,’ I said, looking up at him and smiling as I worked around him to get everything into place. ‘Two more things, Felix.’

‘Yes, Sir. Well. I thought Cunningham was ah, too…not weak, exactly, but soft at first. He seemed to have a different style to you, Sir.’

_He does,_ I thought.

‘But he was obviously building towards a goal in mind. I think I enjoyed how methodical it seemed, instead of simply- Instead of Melusine, where tarquins largely hurt someone as much as they could, as quickly as they could.’

‘Cunningham’s style is lovely, I think, as an introduction to how other flames play,’ I said, as I cuffed Felix’s arms to the armrests. I listened to Felix’s breathing – shallow but not terrified – and then stroked the palm of his hand before moving to his legs. ‘I’d like you to watch Gisela at some point, but I’m not sure how you’d feel about women flames.’

‘I… I like Gisela, Sir,’ Felix said. ‘Perhaps- She’s not like- She’s different.’

‘Aye,’ I said, smiling to myself. I moved Felix’s legs until they were bent not too tightly, and began to fix down his feet and his thighs. Felix’s breathing hitched. It wasn’t often that I put him in restraints this complete, but it also wasn’t often that I had the opportunity to use one of these benches. ‘I’d like you to watch Keane, too. Though not in a hurry. He is a sadist. Not like the ones you’ve known, but enough that I think he might frighten you.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ Felix said.

‘One more thing, my darling,’ I said, cuffing his other leg into place.

‘That- That Temerrin appeared to like what was happening, until the moments he seemed to hate it, Sir.’

I grinned, even as I walked across the room to grab some more items. When I returned, I set the jars and other items I wanted down on the table and lowered the blindfold in place, noting – but ultimately ignoring – the way he flinched. I’d learned with Felix it was best just to get started and calm him during, rather than trying to reassure him that nothing was untoward before I’d even begun.

‘He takes the torment in a lovely fashion, doesn’t he?’ I said.

‘Yes, Sir,’ Felix breathed as I tied the blindfold into place and made sure the knot at the back of his head wasn’t digging into his scalp.

‘So do you, little rabbit,’ I said, smoothing a hand down his chest. ‘One day, I’m not sure when, I’ll have you in a room like that one and everyone else can see what they’re missing out on. Do you find it terrible to think about that?’

‘Not quite like before, Sir,’ Felix said. ‘Not after today. I didn’t feel like Cunningham was performing for us, he was so focused.’

‘We’re taught to be,’ I said, looking at the expanse of Felix’s flesh and feeling hungry with everything I could do to him. I brought both of my hands to his nipples and stroked over them with my fingers. It took no time at all to have them firmed and nubbed beneath my light pinching. ‘Of course there is a performance aspect, but all of that is secondary to the shadow.’

‘And you’d be the same, Sir?’ Felix breathed.

‘Yes,’ I said.

I wanted to ask him if he understood, finally, how different shadows and flames were to whatever he’d been raised with, but it would simply be cruel. Of course he knew it was different, he couldn’t escape it anymore. I’d seen him last night, and if I still felt bruised over it, I thought he must as well.

I palmed his flank several times, stroking the soft skin, staring down at him and the myriad small scars he had around the place. He wore so many of his journeys on his body, whether it was wounds that had healed, or the tattoos on his wrists and hands, or that badger streak of white in his glorious red hair.

He’d fallen silent, and I didn’t think I’d ever get tired of knowing that Felix was dying to find out what was going to happen to him, and hated to be kept in suspense.

That was just where I wanted him, at my mercy and waiting.

I reached for the nipple clamps and checked them over – clean and new – and let the cold metal chain trickle over his chest first. He jerked, and his lips pressed together when I affixed one to a still-erect nipple. I tightened it slowly, until one of his hands twitched, and then I screwed it a little tighter. The nub above the blunt metal prongs already looked abused.

‘Tch, look at this poor thing,’ I said, flicking it lightly.

A faint hiss of breath, and I smiled at Felix even though he couldn’t see me. I attached the other nipple clamp slower than the other, increasing the tension in the spring until he made a strangled noise.

‘Sometimes, Felix,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t pay to pretend you’re in less pain than you are.’

He was breathing heavily now, and I held my palm above his nose to feel those gusts of breath.

‘Yes. Yes, Sir,’ he managed.

I reached for the chain with my other hand, still holding my palm over his face, so that I felt the moment he held his breath, and I felt the heat of his sudden exhale through his mouth. I pulled carefully on the chain and stared down at his cock, and saw it twitch with no direct stimulus at all.

Holy Lady, he was perfect. He boldly claimed to me in the beginning that he could tolerate pain and had no real interest in it, but there were definitely some types of pain he responded to.

His flesh turned pain into beauty.

I moved down his body, switching hold of the chain to my other hand, and then wrapped my fingers around his cock. He moaned softly, his hips trembling, and I moved in the laziest, lightest manner as he fought to keep himself still.

And then I let the chain go, and his cock, and moved back to the table where all the items were.

‘I’m still nearby, Felix,’ I said firmly, knowing how he reacted to my absence.

‘Yes, Sir,’ he said.

I put on leather gloves for the next part, then lined up the ointment I wanted to use. I almost felt sorry for him, and paused, staring over at him. Perhaps he wasn’t ready for this, or perhaps he would panic. There was a neutralising agent for the ointment, just in case.

I wanted some of his panic, but not too much.

I walked over and placed my leather clad hands on him. His head tilted, like he’d realised something had changed. I didn’t know how he’d react to the leather instead of the skin, and so I caressed and stroked him thoroughly, firmly. I anchored him until he started to settle, and then moved my hand between his legs, grasping at his thighs with the increased grip of the leather, prodding between the cheeks of his ass, exposed to me with his legs positioned and anchored the way that they were.

I reached out and pulled for the table on its little wheels, pulling the ointment and items towards me. The lubricant first, and I screwed the metal lid off the glass jar and scooped up some of it, warming it between the leather. Today was going to get messy.

I painted the lubricant sparingly over his cock first, watching his uncertain breathing, and then pressed down at his entrance, testing the opening. The lubricant made things far easier, though I was mindful of the scarring.

The leather added girth to my finger, and at first I only wiggled the tip of my index finger inside, feeling the way he tightened against me and relaxed again even through the supple leather.

I placed my other hand flat on his stomach, then worked my finger inside of him, feeling heat close in almost as though he sought to keep me trapped. I felt the landscape of his insides, different through the leather, the bump of his prostate seeming more hidden until I pressed harder and he made a short, high sound. He tossed his head and I almost pitied him for what was coming.

It took time to open him up properly, to get his entrance as relaxed as it ever was. During that time I left his cock alone, stiff between his legs. I enjoyed taking my time, knowing there was no rush towards any of my goals today.

We could take this nice and easy. Well, I could. I imagine Felix wanted to come.

I reached for another jar and had to be careful unscrewing the lid with how slick the leather had become. I sniffed it to make sure it was the right one, and my eyes started to water when I pressed it too close to my face.

‘I’m glad to finally have you here at the Copse,’ I said, as I coated two of my fingers with the stuff. ‘They have far more of a range of equipment than even I have at my disposal. There’s only so much I can carry when I come visit you. And I suppose I could always take this with me, but I think you’ll be reassured to know you’re largely only likely to experience it here.’

Felix’s mouth was pursed in a curious, apprehensive frown as I curled my wet fingers around his cock. I stroked him only a few times, enough to distribute the ointment.

A pause, and his mouth opened, his hands lifted from the armrests as much as they could within their bindings.

_‘Sir,’_ he said, almost breathless.

‘It’s fine, little rabbit,’ I said in a mockery of a soothing voice. ‘It doesn’t last forever.’

I pushed one of the ointment-covered leather fingers inside of him, and he froze, his hole clamped shut around me, trying to keep me out.

_Too late for that, little rabbit,_ I thought, as I pushed deeper inside.

I felt the moment his thighs strained as the chemicals in the ointment began to affect him. He wouldn’t notice them as deeply, though they’d be having an effect. I knew from descriptions that the heat could be unbearable at first, prickling and sharp and overwhelming. Almost like needles. And I withdrew my finger to make sure I rubbed more of it directly at his entrance, over all the sensitive, poor little nerve endings there.

His breathing was already shaking, a locked up sound in his throat as he sucked down a breath, then another, and then he shut his mouth tight and keened behind his teeth.

‘What I like most,’ I said conversationally, ‘is that I think you’re more susceptible to this than most, which is why I’m not using much. But you’re feeling that, aren’t you, Felix? Ah, there we go, is that good?’ I had my finger back deep inside of him, pushing up into his prostate, and he made a delightful, distressed warbling sound that was no doubt him trying to wrap his head around the burning sensation along with the acute pleasure of it all.

I grabbed the plug, this one made of wood, which meant I’d likely have to purchase it once all was said and done. I had no problems with acquiring that nor anything else I was using today.

I covered it in an equal mixture of lubricant and the other ointment, and then pushed it against his hole, using my other finger to keep him open, watching with delight as his opening tried to twitch shut.

‘Now, now,’ I said, ‘you’re not trying to stop me from using you the way I wish, are you?’

‘No, _no,_ Sir,’ Felix said in a way that made it clear that he had no idea how to control his reactions to the ointment.

‘You might wish you did,’ I said, pushing the plug deeper.

I watched the taut muscle at his entrance stretch until the skin flushed pale, and I pulled back and twisted the plug, then pushed forwards again. This one was longer and deeper than the toys he had in the lighthouse, though I was sure it wasn’t impossible for him to take.

Each time I pushed forwards, he opened a little wider, until some new wave of ointment affected him, and then his back would arch or he’d slam his hands down into the upholstered leather.

At one point I slapped the outside of his thigh. ‘Try harder, little rabbit,’ I chided.

He slumped, moaning softly, and then to his credit his hips finally stopped shifting restlessly.

‘There,’ I breathed. ‘That’s very good. You’re so lovely, Felix. Just beautiful.’

Another moan, this one louder, and I pushed the plug deeper than before and felt the strain of my hand and the plug against the resistance his body. I stopped to twist it at its near-widest point, and that was the ticket. The plug slipped in at once, and Felix whimpered as it rested there inside of him, firm and unmoving.

His cock hadn’t softened at all, though it had flushed an angry red from the ointment, it was otherwise holding up well. When I wrapped my hand around it, he exhaled in a huff, his mouth open like he wanted to shout. I grinned, stroked him a few times, and moved away from the cradle of his thighs back to the table of tools I’d fetched.

I took off one of the gloves carefully and laid it down. With my naked hand I picked up the next tool, and felt that peculiar glee that comes from knowing one is being terrifically unfair to a shadow, and knowing it will all be worth it in the end. Felix was going to hate me. And I suspected we would spend the entire afternoon nestled together, him firmly in my arms and too worn out to manage more than raw affection.

I craved that too.

I coated the sound with lubricant, and then, because I was a monster, I used the leather glove to coat it with the burning ointment as well. I grasped Felix’s cock with the leather glove, my naked fingers holding the sound carefully.

When he felt the metal stroke the outside of the head of his cock, he went still.

‘ _No,’_ he breathed.

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said archly. 

_‘Sir,’_ he begged. 

‘Mm?’ I said. ‘Oh, am I being a devil to you, Felix? I’m trying to help you obey me. This will make it much harder for you to come.’

I squeezed the head of his cock, opening the little slit, and dropped the tip of the sound inside. There was enough of the burning ointment on the tip itself that within seconds he was writhing again, small but desperate noises etching their way out of his throat.

‘Breathe, sweetheart,’ I said, pushing the sound further down, twisting it to make sure the way was fully lubricated.

A sound like a sob, and I wanted to check to see if the blindfold was wet, but my hands were occupied.

‘It burns,’ Felix warbled, his voice going high before cracking out completely.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I want it to.’

Another half-sob, and my cock twitched, arousal flooding up the back of my spine and making me ache for him all over again. I hadn’t expected it quite so soon, but I was captivated by his responses.

‘This one isn’t even as long as the others,’ I said, ‘though it is thicker. Can you feel it, Felix? Stretching you? It’s not going to do you any damage at all. Not the ointment nor the sound. But oh, look at that, you’re just swallowing it up.’

He was, and I stared fascinated as I pushed the sound deeper. His hips were straining backwards, he wasn’t going to be able to escape it. He was breathing rapidly, but it wasn’t the same fear as last time, it was just that delicious challenge. I felt like I was not just fucking into his cock, but also into his mind.

His mouth moved several times around the phrase _‘it burns,’_ and I almost wished he were crying it aloud, but I savoured those frantic whispers too. He seemed unaware that he was even speaking.

Poor little rabbit, whatever trap had he landed himself in?

The sound never quite sunk in of its own volition because it was too wide, so I kept up a steady, careful pressure throughout. And there at the top of it, the sound widened before narrowing sharply, a neatly made penis plug.

When the plug began to stretch his slit, he gasped out a wretched sound and the whole bench jerked as he went to yank his arms free, no doubt to move my hand away. He was restrained, unable to touch me.

‘No,’ I purred, ‘you’re quite stuck, I’m afraid. I hope you’re not thinking of disobeying me.’

‘Sir, _Sir_ ,’ he said frantically, and I knew very well what he was trying to say, and petted him idly with my other hand.

‘There now,’ I said. ‘It’s not so difficult, is it? It’s not going to tear you and you’re not going to bleed. It’s just a little discomfort now.’

‘Oh,’ Felix managed, _‘oh._ Sir, _please,_ can we just- Can we-? Wouldn’t you rather fuck me, Sir?’

‘I’m going to, my sweet little boy,’ I said, grinning at the thin line of his lips and pushing the sound in deeper. ‘Trust me. I’m going to.’

The sound he made was loud enough that if he opened his mouth, I knew he’d be keening. His fingers were clenching down, I’d have to make sure I rubbed them later and make sure they were okay. We had plenty of time.

I much preferred this Felix over the one I’d first met in the Althammara, or the one I’d taken in the lighthouse. The Felix that struggled, that showed me his fear, his nerves, the challenge of his submission and yielding. For once there was a time when he would have been blank-faced and betrayed himself with fine tremors and a racing heart and very little else. I’m sure he didn’t trust me in this moment, and yet he did after a fashion. He trusted me enough with a range of feelings that I hadn’t seen until I’d dared to learn him better, to care better.

When the penis plug was finally seated, I let go of the sound and it stayed in place. I danced my leather-covered fingertips over the tip of his cock and he moaned like he was in agony. But his cock was still hard, and from the flush over his face and chest, I thought his body might be finding a fair amount of pleasure in all that discomfort.

I grasped the chain connecting the two nipple clamps, and jiggled it lightly, and he cried out in despair.

I reached for the final jar, the antidote to the burning salve, and rubbed its cool slickness over my own cock. I was only half-hard, and it would take me some time to come.

Standing between his legs, I wiggled the plug out of him, and at the choked sweet sound he made as its widest part left him, I pushed it back in again. And then leisurely, taking all the time with his scarred anus as I wanted, I removed it and pushed it back in until he was squirming, his cock flushed, his balls drawn up.

‘Don’t come,’ I reminded him. I pulled the wooden plug out of him at once, and watched his hole as it gaped for a moment, and then closed a little, and then opened again.

Not bothering to rush myself, I fucked leather-clad fingers into him and kept him open, not searching out his prostate, but idly playing with him and leaving his cock alone. I did it for long enough that his breathing settled and then became deep and long. When I began glancing my fingers over his prostate, his moans were dazed and rich with pleasure. I thought I saw the beginnings of his being lightstruck, and I hoped I could help him reach that state today.

It took time to find my own arousal, at least an hour. Time to need more lubricant for his poor, used hole. Time to know that I had stretched him enough that I could fuck him however roughly I wished. Time enough to take the nipple clamps off him and scratch angry red lines into his sides as he screamed and then exhaled ‘ _Sir’_ on every needy, desperate breath.

Time enough for him to settle back down again, his nipples bruised and sore.

By the time I pressed into him, his reaction was small. His cock jerked, his breath caught, and his hips moved like he was trying to capture the length of me. But he didn’t cry out, and I suspected he was thoroughly worn out, drifting hard in the space where he was fully illuminated and no longer mired in shadow at all. He was lightstruck, floating in it, and I wished to keep him here for as long as I possibly could.

I fucked him the way I wanted for some time. Long, easy strokes that felt lazy and good for me, alternated with short, hard ones that brought me close to my own release, aiming sometimes to glance over and over his prostate, and at other times not to touch it at all.

Soon, his body picked up on the spark of an orgasm it had been chasing all day. His breathing quickened. His abdomen reddened and his cock was nearly purple now. His balls were full. I listened to the cadence of his breathing, and wondered if he even remembered my order not to come.

What a shadow forgot when they were lightstruck had to always be forgiven, they were barely aware of the world, made of pleasure and pain and surrender and nothing else. A broken rule during a lightstruck moment was only because there was an obedience to a flame’s will that was so profound, it transcended mere verbal orders.

He was mine, and I burned for him because of it.

Before I came, and before he did, I reached down and placed an unfair amount of pressure behind his balls. Enough that he yelped and then shivered, and I waited to see if I’d pulled him out of the space he’d found – it didn’t seem I had. There, in that fleshy space, I pushed up and in and had to fuck more shallowly because of it.

‘You can come whenever you wish, little rabbit,’ I murmured, reaching up with my gloved hand to carefully stroke his cock around the sound.

Nothing happened at first, but then small whimpers started, one after another, faint and mindless. His sounds were driven from him, and I could change my thrusts and the movement of my hand based on their timbre. I grasped his cock more surely, I pressed harder, and his voice shifted to heavy, guttural groans.

I made a point of not bothering to remove the sound, and kept the pressure up at his peritoneum, and waited.

His orgasm rolled into him hard, his cock stiffening further, bowing upwards towards his belly until it was flush against it. And then he turned stiff and rigid, gasping repeatedly, his head tilting backwards as his scalp dragged against the headrest. He shook violently, almost like he was undergoing a seizure.

I felt the strong rolling movements in the way his ass squeezed me, in the jerking of his cock, in the way his balls moved. But he spilled no semen, and towards the end of an orgasm that lasted far longer than many of his others, he moaned out a miserable, exhausted sound, his fingers splaying and trembling beautifully.

‘I know,’ I soothed. ‘I know, sweet boy.’

He sobbed once, and then again, and the noises reduced to a soft, low moaning as I removed the pressure I was keeping against him and gripped his inner thighs and continued to fuck him.

I had planned a whole day of this. A whole day, but I’d also not expected to get lightstruck this soon. And I found it terribly disarming myself, coming far faster than I expected given I had only expected to release twice today, once this morning, and then again at the end of the day.

I pressed into him and trembled, groaning myself, resting one bare hand and one gloved over his torso, pushing him down and pulling him into me.

Afterwards, I stood there for a time, softening, leaning forward enough that I didn’t slip out. And then I reached for the sound and twisted it gently, and he made a sleepy, uncomfortable noise.

‘Hush now,’ I said. ‘It has to come out.’

He didn’t respond except to moan, and I slid the sound out of him and knew it likely felt worse coming out than it did going in, now that his cock was limp and he didn’t have arousal to balance out the feel of that plug inside of him.

I inspected his limp cock in my fingers, even as he moved like he didn’t want me touching him there at all. But he sagged back, and I looked at the swollen, red tip of his cock and determined that he’d been stretched, but not torn, and he’d likely be quite sore for the weekend but not much longer.

Perhaps it was monstrous of me that I liked it. That I wanted his ass to ache and his cock to throb as he pissed. That I desired his exhaustion as well as his arousal, that I took so much pride in his independence, and demanded this dependence as well.

‘I was going to do so much to you,’ I said, pulling away and tossing the sound onto the table. I walked tiredly across the room to a towel and wiped off my hands, and then cleaned them at the sink before returning to him.

He breathed slowly, heavily, but I knew he wasn’t asleep.

When I pulled the blindfold off, his eyes half-opened.

‘Oh, my darling boy,’ I said, ‘you are thoroughly lightstruck, aren’t you?’

He gazed up at me like a child might, and he didn’t fight the bindings, and he didn’t appear to be upset with anything at all. But it was when his mouth broadened in a simple innocent grin that I knew I had him.

‘Yes,’ I cooed. ‘You must be exhausted, little rabbit. Do you want me to take care of you? Is that it?’

His smile slowly disappeared, and then he nodded with wide, owlish eyes, and I bent down and kissed him. His lips moved sluggishly against mine, and I suspected I’d have to support him back to our room.

I took my time wiping him down, both to keep my own centre, but also to make sure that he stayed settled. I could tell he was fragile, and when I released his arms, he reached for me and grabbed at my sleeve and then wouldn’t let go, staring at me like he was trying to convey something very important.

‘I love you, Felix,’ I said soberly, holding a cloth in my hands, ‘but you have to let me go so I can clean you up.’

His fingers twitched on my sleeve a few times, and then his arm dropped and I grasped his forearm and rested it on the armrest so it wouldn’t just hang.

He whined softly as I cleaned his penis, his entrance, and then made a sound almost like a low growling purr when I rubbed at his legs. I realised he quite liked his inner thighs being stroked like that, and returned to them with my nails, gently scratching him until he slumped and his head dropped sideways, and I thought he _was_ about to truly sleep.

It was some time later that I coaxed some water into him, though he seemed far more interested in licking at my fingers than actually drinking. He was pliant and docile, and I would have murdered anyone who thought to hurt him now.

I didn’t have to carry him back to our room, but he leaned against me heavily. I held his cane, and we took it slow. I turned the hook by the door of the room we’d used, so that the servants would know I was done and be ready to clean up and no doubt charge me for everything I’d used that couldn’t be used on another. Honestly, I wanted the bench too, for it was a lovely height for my hips.

I helped him onto the bed, and he curled up immediately, one hand by his face as he sleepily blinked at the world.

‘Roll onto your stomach, sweetheart,’ I ordered, and watched as he tried to obey the words while he barely had mastery over his own body. He made it, and then sighed hugely, and I thought he’d let me fuck him again except I was already spent for the day. I wanted to enjoy him as he was.

So I straddled him and massaged his scar-laden back and shoulders, finding the tormented muscles beneath, and instead of twitching or being beset by nerves and fears, instead of castigating me or hating it or squirming away, he moaned gently and softly until he fell deeply asleep.

*

I fell asleep soon after, laying by his side and deciding I did not quite have the stamina I had some twenty years ago, but that I acquitted myself rather well regardless.

When I woke, it was still light, but I was hazy from being half-asleep.

Felix’s fingers curled tightly in mine and he pressed close, his hair curling over onto my shoulder and even up around my own hair.

‘I love you,’ he whispered, and I suspected he spoke so freely because he believed me to be asleep. ‘But I have loved so many who have treated me badly. I like you so much, but I have liked so many who have been horrendous to me. I have no new word for the marvel that you are, Ferrand. I have no language for it. But you are my flame, and I shall be your shadow forever, forever, and I suspect I am still not quite in my right mind but…’

I knew he wasn’t. I could hear it in his voice, even as I struggled to keep my breathing even and tried not to choke up over his words.

‘…No,’ he said softly to himself. ‘No, I only have this feeling, and no words for it, which is damnably unlike me. That it is bigger than anything I have ever known is the thing that makes me think I could believe in a god or two, but then I realise _you_ have given me this feeling, and so I shall believe in you instead, Ferrand Carey.’

He sighed out a long breath and pressed in closer, until his exhales mingled with mine, until I thought our noses would be touching except that I suspected he didn’t wish to wake me. How I felt blessed to have woken and heard his quiet, breathless declaration.

I wanted to run to Isobel and grasp her shoulders and tell her how it felt to be loved by someone like Felix, but I didn’t think I’d ever be able to explain it to anyone.

I’d just have to keep showing him how it felt, and I’d have to make peace with that, and grieve for a world that wouldn’t understand what it meant to be loved by Felix Harrowgate.


	25. Brothers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So imagine me frantically sure that I've called another chapter in this story 'brothers' only to realise that actually no I'd done that in my Fae Tales original serial on my other AO3 account and it's just...I have a thing for writing brothers so here we are. It's so great to be updating this so much faster! I'm so happy about it, and I hope you folks are as well :)

_Felix_

*

The week following my excursion at the Copse was a busy affair. Between working hard developing a curriculum at the Institution, many meetings with Hastings, Ashmead and others who wanted to query me on my content, and social calls from Corbie and Ferrand, I dropped into bed at the end of each night imagining Pecton’s voice chiding me for not doing my calf exercises properly. I tried to do them first thing in the mornings instead.

I still managed to find time to have a new wardrobe fitted, visiting two tailors on Wyatt’s recommendation, one of whom had a shopfront already filled with clothing, several pieces which I liked enough to purchase on the spot. When I stated my dismay at the lack of bright colours – not to mention how everything was designed to fit far shorter, stockier people – the tailor hesitated and then squinted at me.

‘With all due respect, I understand you’re a foreigner, Sir, but you will look like… they will think you are… Well- It is only that you see, some of the people who wear bright colours, they are either foreigners like the Ygressine or they exchange physical satisfaction for- for _money.’_

I stared at him coolly. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m aware.’

There was a time – not that long ago – when I would have blandly told him that I was the very scum of society he was trying to delicately warn me about. Although prostitution was legal here, it still wasn’t a highly favoured career choice.

After some awkwardness, the tailor became increasingly excited at the prospect of ordering in coloured fabrics, though his selection wasn’t anything like what we had in Melusine. He spoke at length of how he thought a deep blue would complement my eyes, colouring and hair while still highlighting my features. When he realised I somewhat _liked_ to stand out, I could see he was beginning to think of me as an experimental project.

It shouldn’t have been endearing, but it was. And for the first time in years, I began to enjoy the sartorial again, as well as the challenges of somehow melding my fashion sense with the tastes of the sedate and muted Corambins.

When he showed me a fabric sample with embroidery about the hem, and then pointed at my tattoos, I realised he wanted to make it look as though the tattoos on my hands and forearms continued up the length of a deep blue coat.

‘What’s your name, again?’ I said, and he smiled as he wrote some shorthand notes with a stubby little pencil.

‘Ludovi Victorie,’ he said.

‘Ah,’ I said. The storefront was called _Ludovi,_ perhaps I should have been paying attention. ‘I see. Thank you.’

It was the most I’d paid on a single bill since leaving Esmer the first time to be exiled in Grimglass. Guilt bloomed up from a quiet place inside of me and refused to unhook itself. I would have to account for myself to Mildmay, who I was becoming increasingly certain didn’t even want me here in the first place.

*

After my adventure at the Copse, I worried for how Ashmead would treat me in our meetings, but he was a consummate professional. It was a relief to realise that he’d treat me with the same respect he always did, and I hadn’t realised until our first meeting after our encounter at the Copse that I’d been so concerned about it.

The only time it bled through was once, during a meeting with just the two of us. We were eating lunch together after fielding a rather ridiculous and spurious challenge to my curriculum being presented at the Women’s College of Thaumaturgy.

He looked up at me over his tea, then said:

‘The Duke of Murtagh is a very lucky man.’

I considered him for a long time, considered what I knew of Murtagh, and what I knew of the culture of the Copse.

‘He is,’ I said finally. ‘He’s a possessive man, too, but he is not a jealous one. Am I likely to see you at the Copse again when I next return to Esmer?’

Ashmead cleared his throat, smiled a flame’s smile, and that was that. One more thing to be cautious and curious about, I supposed, when I visited the Copse again. But if that was the worst thing I had to fear, my life had drastically changed indeed. After that we were professionals once more, and matters of flames and shadows were tabled for another day altogether.

*

The carriage ride back to Grimglass was more taxing than the ride to Esmer because I’d been neglecting my leg. Vanessa was firm that we stop more often, and the pithy, aged brougham driver simply shrugged and said:

‘Get paid by the day.’

Which meant he didn’t mind how many times we rested my leg or stopped to wander about a field, because he’d get paid more if the journey took longer.

I was nervous to be heading back to Grimglass and its grey skies and grey lighthouse and bending stunted glasses by the cliff that dropped down to the pewter, choppy ocean. Nervous and afraid. I wanted to see Mildmay, I missed him more fiercely than I thought I was capable of, given how busy I’d been, but what if I took one look at him and the lighthouse and realised I couldn’t live there anymore? Or worse, what if Mildmay didn’t want me to leave again?

Vanessa talked non-stop on the first day like a mechanical toy that was running down on its energy and needed to discharge every story and piece of gossip that she’d heard. I was inured to this process, I knew enough people like this in the Mirador and some of it was relevant or interesting.

On the second day she was quiet and pensive, and I wondered if she hated returning to Grimglass. I thought it might be too forward to ask, especially if the reminder would be unwelcome. Or perhaps she normally fell silent on these journeys, her maid Woodlock looking out of the window, occasionally smiling at what she saw.

When we arrived back in Grimglass village, Vanessa exited the carriage and turned back to me.

‘I quite like your company,’ she said. ‘We should do this again, Virtuer Harrowgate.’

I tipped my head towards her in acknowledgement, and her eyes gleamed as she took me in, and then she spun and walked in a decisive manner towards the Pallister-Brightmore household.

*

I saw the lighthouse from the brougham as we approached, and a strange warmth bloomed in me at the sight of its dreary demeanour, cutting its way into the sky like a grim stone blade. And yet that was home, where Mildmay lived, and Adelais, and Walsh. My room and my bed and my giant bath that Mildmay had found for me where I fit comfortably and didn’t have to worry about my legs being tightly bent – unlike my bath at the Silver Sparrow. My stomach practically cramped with hunger at the idea of Adelais’ cooking _,_ I couldn’t believe my own response, I’d barely cared at all about food my entire life.

As the brougham headed back towards the village, I took in the lighthouse. Everything was the same as it ever was, and yet I had a different view of it after visiting Esmer.

I lifted the heavy knocker – too heavy to be blown about by the winds – and let it pound into the door twice. I had no idea who was even going to be home. Mildmay might be out in the village, and Adelais too, chasing her women, and Walsh, well…

The double doors opened and Mildmay stood there, staring at me with his green eyes, and I saw what it was to have my brother miss me after only two weeks or so apart.

‘We took a bit longer,’ I said apologetically. ‘I haven’t been able to properly keep up my calf exercises. But I’m here.’

‘You’re here,’ he said.

‘I’m home.’

His eyes smiled at me, and then he went and called for Walsh to fetch my bags.

Adelais was there, sitting in her armchair and reading a book. She only looked up at me once, as though to check I was all in one piece, and then went right back to reading. A minute later:

‘There’s some baking about, but you can fetch it yourself, I just got off my feet and I don’t want to be back on them.’

‘Good afternoon, Adelais,’ I said with a faint smile.

I had the satisfaction of seeing her lips set into a smile in response, even though she didn’t look up at me. I availed myself of the kitchen, finding what looked like regular bread rolls piled in a basket, only to pick one up and realise it was heavy enough that it was one of her stuffed, savoury rolls. So I sat at the table with two and ate both far too quickly, then gestured towards the smaller travel bag that Walsh had set on the table.

‘I bought you some books,’ I said to Mildmay. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I didn’t manage to get to a bookshop more than the once, and then I found so much more that I thought you’d like and almost nothing on what I wanted.’

‘Kethe, why would I _mind?_ ’ he said, then reached eagerly for the bag. He kept looking at me, quick darting glances that weren’t at all covert. And I was tired and I wanted to tell him everything, and also wanted to tell him nothing at all, because the idea of speaking of what I’d packed into those days was exhausting.

I didn’t dread the quieter life of Grimglass at all.

It was only a short time later – Mildmay already poring over a recently published enginist manual – that I made my way up the elevator to my room, managed to get through some of my stretches, and fell into a deep sleep that lasted well into the next morning.

*

Life after that appeared to go back to normal, but I noticed the changes. I no longer did the drudge of Grice’s notes at all hours, but kept something of a schedule with them now. I gave myself more time to stretch out and work my calf, and only translated Grice’s notes for a few hours in the evening and the afternoon, leaving the morning to use as I wished once I’d worked through Pecton’s exercises.

My calf continued to improve, though slowly. Pecton still grumbled about what a bad injury it was. I was regularly amazed by his ability to bring back flexibility, tone and movement to my leg. Of course I needed my walking stick every day, and I wasn’t going to walk down the many steps into the labyrinth beneath the lighthouse ever again, but the severe cramps I used to experience at night seemed to be a thing of the past, and my sleep overall was better than it used to be. I suspected the pain that I’d grown accustomed to interfered with my rest without my knowing, and as it receded to a more manageable level, my sleep was kinder, and the mornings seemed less dreary.

The biggest change was that I started to use my magic more often. I lit the fire in the downstairs hearth and in my own room with magic, and now that Walsh was used to it and knew I wasn’t about to burn him to death, he regularly asked me to see to the ground floor hearth so that he didn’t have to hurt his arthritic hands getting the fire started in the mornings. I made my witchlights every evening, doing exercises to keep my magic honed. I practiced and experimented with magical techniques that might come in handy with regards to aethereals, labyrinths, hauntings and more, and realised I might need to summon Julian to the lighthouse to talk to him about non-magical techniques that he could use for himself.

It was a delight, too, when Mildmay asked if there were ways I could merge my magic with his understanding of engineering. He only mentioned in passing, and we hadn’t yet done it, but that he suggested it at all was a balm. I’d used my magic to help Mildmay once, fixing the engine of the light in the lighthouse to ensure that it would always run, whether or not Mildmay and I were there, it was one of the few times we’d worked in quiet harmony in those early, tough months.

There was a time when applying magic to plumbing or electricity would have seemed too banal for my liking. Malkar wouldn’t have wanted me to be studying it or working in that fashion, but I liked both architectural thaumaturgy and thaumaturgical architecture, and it seemed a natural branching on from both.

In the meantime, Amice came around with his deliveries of food and mail – though not as often now that Adelais went to the village nearly every day – and seemed in better spirits than normal. The first time I’d been too busy to ask about it, but the second time I drew him aside.

At my prompting, his beautiful face transformed into a smile so bright I almost ached to be a younger, different person who might court him. Of course we had very little in common and I was simply taken by his features, but it was a pleasant feeling all the same.

‘Julian and I, we had a talk,’ he said.

I lifted my eyebrows, and Amice’s cheeks coloured nicely. He touched his long fingers to his black curls and then his smile returned.

‘It’s new,’ he said. ‘We’re taking it slow like, to be safe. He is… Virtuer Harrowgate, he said something about a Cyriack Thrale that made me so angry. An’ I almost went down to Esmer that day to sock him. But anyway, since you’ve been to Esmer, do you know? Forgive my asking, Virtuer Harrowgate, but I think Julian is troubled and he cannot just go to Constant Westmorlin to talk about his grievances like I can.’

I grimaced, for I remembered only bits and pieces, and knew Murtagh understood all of this better than I did. But I’d worked at the Institution, and I knew Cyriack well enough to understand exactly how he’d treated Julian, both before and after he’d discovered Julian was an aethereal.

‘The truth is,’ I said, ‘Cyriack was never particularly good to Julian even before…everything.’

Amice glowered, his jaw setting. ‘That’s not what Julian said.’

‘I know, and it could be that Julian didn’t know any better because he cared for Cyriack so much. Julian adored him, and likely still owns all blame for everything that happened with Cyriack, and wrongly. He would have done anything for the boy, and was very much… I don’t want to say subservient, but he didn’t behave much the way Murtagh would expect a Carey to behave around someone like Thrale.’

‘He was taken advantage of,’ Amice said, his voice low.

‘I suspect that Julian has plenty of reasons to be troubled and not all of them are about the fact that he’s an aethereal,’ I finished quietly.

‘Right. Well. Thank you ever so much for telling me, Virtuer Harrowgate. He does… He does seem happier than before, but he drinks, some nights. He drinks so much.’

‘Some of us have done things we shouldn’t, that we grow out of doing,’ I said quietly.

‘Even you?’

‘Oh, Amice. How on earth do you think I ended up exiled to Corambis in the first place? If the worst thing Julian is doing right now is drinking, well, he is yet young, and the two of you will find your way together. Let Julian know I’d like to see him about working more with him so that I can help other aethereals.’

‘I think he’d like that,’ Amice said, tilting his head and looking off into the distance. ‘May I come too? I know nothing about magic, and I thought it was sinful, but I’ve decided it’s probably not _sinful.’_

‘I’m beginning to think you believe a lot of things to be sinful, and yet you’re still with Julian?’

‘That’s the thing about sin,’ Amice said, smiling once more. ‘We all do it. Turns out there’s some I just don’t want to avoid.’

‘You could always not see it as a sin,’ I said slowly.

‘Aye, an’ were I a godless heathen like you, Virtuer Harrowgate, that’s what I’d do!’

We laughed, and I realised there was genuine warmth here, between us.

‘You know, if you’re that comfortable talking back to me, you might as well call me _Felix.’_

‘So you say, Virtuer Harrowgate,’ Amice said cheerfully, then left to talk to Adelais.

I thought he might be good for Julian. After all, Julian was still learning what it meant to have a backbone, and Amice seemed to have enough for the both of them. I wasn’t sure I would have found it easy either, with a family like Julian’s.

*

I missed Murtagh, but I also appreciated space away from him. It was novel to enjoy an intense relationship and an intense love where I was happy to be away from it for weeks at a time, even if my body craved him. Sometimes I woke from dreams erect and aching, and brought myself off with hands and even toys if I could be bothered with them, and I’d contemplate sending him salacious letters about it and was usually too tired once I was done to go through with it.

I also wasn’t quite ready for Wyatt to read them, since I was sure he vetted all of Murtagh’s mail. Perhaps I could talk to Murtagh about it first.

It was lovely, in a way, to have something and someone to miss while knowing it wasn’t gone forever. I could miss Esmer now, but it wasn’t lost to me. I could miss the Institution and teaching and Corbie and city culture, and I would immerse myself in it far longer next time.

And then I would miss Grimglass, and that was the greatest novelty of all.

One evening, with Adelais away with some lady she was besotted with, and Walsh in his rooms sleeping early, Mildmay and I sat side by side on the broad, comfortable couch in front of the fireplace. We were both reading companionably, he was going over some book on water engines, and I was reading a book Gisela had pressed on me before I’d left the Copse, about the dance between flames and shadows and the history behind it.

I couldn’t recall a time we had sat quite so comfortably together since we’d arrived at the lighthouse, and so I found myself getting distracted from my reading and enjoying the company of Mildmay _._ I still found him stunning after all these years, and I was glad other women appreciated him in the village. I was finally relieved to not feel pangs of arousal or a desire that was so strong I wanted no other.

I’m not sure we would have ever been truly happy, if I’d gotten what I wanted back then. Perhaps in another lifetime.

‘Can feel your eyes on me,’ he said.

‘You’re sounding more Caloxan by the day,’ I said.

‘It’s Kay,’ Mildmay said, reaching for his bookmark and sliding it into the book, before setting it down on the armrest. ‘I like it, it’s economical. Besides, I don’t give a rat’s ass about sounding proper. Just want to be understood.’

‘Which you do marvellously, these days.’

Mildmay looked at me like he wasn’t sure if I was mocking him or not – and it would always hurt, to know that I’d treated him badly enough for so long that he had good reason to still wonder – but then he relaxed.

‘Heard Kay say ‘septad and six’ the other day, and thought it was good, y’know, good to get some of Melusine into this little village. Them villagers could use some more ways to cuss. It’s always ‘Holy Lady this’ and ‘Holy Lady that.’’

‘That is true.’

‘So what’s got you all thoughtful tonight?’ he said, leaning back and then stretching. I put my own book down and looked towards the flames jumping in the hearth. I rued the fact that a fireplace would never just be a fireplace anymore, I would always look at flames and think of Murtagh.

‘I believe going to Esmer helped me to see…more of the benefits of Grimglass, of living with you.’

Mildmay looked at me sharply, and then his eyes turned pleased, his mouth twitched. I knew he’d been worried, though we’d barely talked about it.

‘Y’ain’t been in Esmer for three straight months yet. Might not want to come back next time. Powers and saints, you might not ever come back.’

‘I think I will,’ I said, smiling to myself. ‘For a start, Murtagh would drive me up the wall. But it’s better here, isn’t it? I know you’ve always appreciated it, but perhaps I was never meant to live in one place forever.’

‘You’ve always been blown about on the winds. Sacred bleeding fuck, Felix, I’d never been nowhere ‘til I met you and suddenly we crossed the whole world it felt like. Troia to fucking Corambis. You better not be having thoughts about Ygress or the Norvenas.’

‘Oh yes,’ I said drily. ‘With my leg, that hates carriage rides and cannot fathom walking for hours at a time. I can’t _wait._ Let’s leave tomorrow.’

‘Wouldn’t mind getting about Corambis a bit, though. I liked it, getting to St Vanhalie, even if I didn’t- Even if I was distracted. Lotta nice country out there, lotta nice little villages.’

‘You can,’ I said. ‘If you ever want to just…go.’

Mildmay sighed and then also looked towards the fire. ‘It’s nice to think about, but getting down to the village and back again is plenty right now. Maybe once things are settled.’

‘You mean me going to Esmer.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m going to come back. I’ll _keep_ coming back.’

‘Yeah,’ Mildmay said. ‘I’m the kind of fuckhead that just needs to see it a few times before I’ll believe it.’

I nodded. I understood that myself. It had taken not just Murtagh’s patience with me, but also plenty of time to realise he wasn’t about to abandon me at a moment’s notice. It had taken time to see the ways he wasn’t like Malkar, when I was obsessed with all the ways he was. Mildmay had been as betrayed by life as I had, and I was one of his betrayers. That he was so loyal and patient to this day was a credit to him, and it was quite something to have gone from being an orphan with no real family at all, to having him in my life and knowing I had a brother who stood by me almost from the first.

‘We have time,’ I said quietly. ‘You don’t have to believe it now.’

‘Powers and saints, you’ve changed too,’ he said, his voice quiet but fervent. ‘I hated it at first. You and the Duke. Kethe, I _hated_ it. Used to think about how I’d kill him and manage to keep you at the same time.’

‘Goodness.’

‘Fuck, right?’ he said, laughing. ‘But gave it some time and then I saw all the changes for myself. Murtagh pointed out a couple of things too, but saw well enough that… I don’t know. You do need it. Need him. Even that night you said you’d stay with him before St Vanhalie. Thought it was crazy-ass madness. But it wasn’t.’

‘I don’t know why I need the things that I do,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it was my upbringing or perhaps I would have always been this way. But…they’re different about it here. It took me a while to understand that myself. Even the first time I met Murtagh, I thought it was something unique about him. Instead it’s bedded down in the culture in a way that is- I hesitate to use the word beautiful, but it’s certainly more respectable than Melusine’s martyrs and tarquins.’

‘Powers and blessed fucking saints it is. Can I read that book after you? Get a better idea of it? That’s got history, right?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s not particularly explicit at all. It’s well written.’

‘Yeah,’ he said in acknowledgement.

‘Speaking of…books and well, purchases,’ I said, wincing at my clumsiness. ‘I spent rather a lot on clothing while I was in Esmer. I- I didn’t show much restraint.’

‘Good,’ Mildmay said. His expression was the closest it got to a grimace when he looked at me. ‘Never realised you had so many fucking problems about money. That was Malkar, and he ain’t here no more, and he’s never gonna be. Felix, you can _buy stuff._ It’s your money, you don’t have to tell me what you bought. I’m glad you bought it.’

I stared at him in gratitude, then looked down, shame curling inside me.

‘I may…still check sometimes,’ I said. ‘That seems to be a particularly hard habit to break.’

‘I’m always gonna tell you it’s okay,’ he said.

We fell silent for a time, and then Mildmay took a sharp breath like he wanted to say something, then swallowed it, then inhaled suddenly again. Another pause, I almost told him to just speak, but instead I waited.

‘I miss Gideon, sometimes,’ he said, refusing to look at me, looking into the flames instead.

I felt something hideous and grief-stricken inside of me, and stared down at my lap. I had a lot of complicated feelings about Gideon.

‘I thought Gideon was the best it could ever be for you,’ Mildmay said slowly. ‘Like, he loved you, he put up with you, and then he… Everything happened the way it did. I miss him, but he- He wasn’t good for you, was he?’

My eyes prickled, for I would always regret Gideon and how it ended. I would always regret not being the person he needed.

‘We were the best we found at the time,’ I said, my voice rasping. ‘And our love was real. But… We had insurmountable differences. I didn’t quite see it at the time, and I blamed myself for everything that went wrong. But I was unable to do the things he wanted me to do, and he was unable to genuinely accept that I was so harmed by Malkar. He felt I personally slighted him, always, towards the end. As though my refusal to…receive him, was a personal attack.’

My good leg drew up onto the chair and I traced patterns into my trousers.

‘Perhaps you don’t want to know any of this,’ I said as an offering. ‘But I cannot tell you how awful it felt to have let myself share something with Murtagh that I was never able to share with Gideon. The first time I… I did what I did for coin in Bernatha, I cried myself to sleep like a child, but after that it got easier. By the time I met Murtagh – and he was good to me – I was frustrated with myself. I continue to be. Gideon deserved better.’

‘But so did you,’ Mildmay said heavily. ‘That’s it, ain’t it? I never saw that, at the time. I was always taking his side because you were…’

‘I was a nasty piece of work,’ I said delicately.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I can see now how it is with someone who accepts you as you are. The Duke- Ferrand, he… I’ve seen the way he looks at you. Gideon had that too – the love – but maybe not the acceptance. But Ferrand also wants to protect you and make you take care of yourself, and you- you’re happier. You’re _happier._ Kethe. I didn’t think it was possible. Thought you were just doomed to misery, like, forever.’

‘So did I.’

‘Should’ve seen that you needed something else, sooner,’ Mildmay said fiercely.

‘No,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t see what I couldn’t see. That’s not fair. Neither of us knew.’

‘You’re not mad, are you? That I miss him sometimes? Even after everything? Sometimes I wish- _Fuck._ Sometimes I wish we could just have him here, to research in the tower and read books with us, and be here, and see Corambis, and Esmer, and get away from everything in the cursed fucking Mirador.’

I found myself wiping at my eyes with my fingertips and couldn’t say a word. It wasn’t something I’d dared to imagine before because it hurt too much. But once Mildmay described it, I realised Gideon would have loved it here. Likely we would have lost him to the Institution, where he would have spent his time researching and learning new ways to communicate with others in a country that didn’t have slaves and didn’t cut the tongues out of their wizards.

‘Sacred bleeding fuck,’ Mildmay muttered, looking just as affected as I was. He made a sound that I thought might be a wretched attempt at laughter. ‘Just feels like he should be here. I don’t need nothing no more, except what’s impossible.’

‘That’s almost poetic,’ I said, smiling weakly.

‘Shut it,’ he said. Then he wiggled back against the couch, the gesture oddly and charmingly sweet. ‘I’ve written some.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’ve written some,’ he said, looking at me sidelong like a child that had been caught pilfering confectionary from a store. ‘Poetry.’

_‘When?_ What- Do you have any?’

‘Yeah,’ Mildmay said. ‘When do you think I started fucking writing it? When I couldn’t read in Melusine?’

‘Oh…’ I was a fool.

‘Might show you one day, though.’

‘I’d like that,’ I said. ‘It would be quite something to read how you see the world, I think.’

Mildmay was flushing now, and went back to staring at the fire. I watched him for a long time, then sighed.

‘I don’t know how you can still think that after all this time I would leave you,’ I said. ‘Yet… I do, as well. I would fear it too, were the situation reversed. I have feared it every time you’ve gone down the village, I know those people offer you so much more than I ever could.’

‘You know that’s stupid, right?’ Mildmay said.

‘No,’ I said, shaking my head at him, even as I smiled to indicate that I did.

‘Want to make something,’ Mildmay said, staring into the flames. ‘Something for Gideon. A grave, or… _something._ Somewhere we can go to remember. It wasn’t for long, but he was family. He was part of us.’

‘He was,’ I said. One day I’d have to talk to Murtagh about him, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get through it all any time soon.

‘Would you mind?’ Mildmay said.

‘No,’ Felix said. ‘I’d help, except-’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Mildmay said, laughing. ‘Don’t need you hurting your other leg, anyway. Though… I know how much of that injury is my fault now. Didn’t realise, before. Along of me going fucking crazy thinking I’d lost you. Lost my mind, Felix. After everything we went through, and then you were _gone._ Think the last few months are the longest we’ve gone without you threatening to die on me.’

‘I don’t want to admit you might be right,’ I said grudgingly, ‘but you might be right.’

‘Isn’t it _nice_ when we’re both not nearly dying all the time?’ Mildmay said fervently.

I opened my mouth to reply, then laughed. Mildmay joined me a moment later, and we sat there, silly and content, talking so late into the night that eventually we saw the strange eldritch glow of dawn peep below the lighthouse doors.

We got up and made ready to go to our beds, and just before I headed towards the elevator, leaning heavily on my cane as my leg had stiffened, Mildmay placed a hand on my forearm to stop me. I looked down at his hand, surprised by his daring given he never normally touched me and I rarely invited it. I looked up only to be arrested by the strength of emotion in his gleaming green eyes. I could see the smile there, the one he’d never let cross his lips.

I knew exactly what he was saying, even though he never spoke aloud. And he kept his hand there and we both looked at each other, and I thought what a marvel it was, what a _marvel,_ that after everything that had befallen us and the way I’d crashed into his life in the most painful way possible, we were still together, strong and endless. Family.

‘I know,’ I said softly. ‘Me too.’

He squeezed my forearm and limped away, and as I rode up to my room in the elevator, I thought how nice it was that despite all of our fears, we knew we loved each other, and we could at least take that part for granted.


	26. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s occurred to me that this works very well as a fifth book in the series and I should have just called it ‘Grimglass’ lmao. Do you know how often I write (moooostly) canon compliant stuff? Not that often! 
> 
> Omg it’s the last chapter. The last chapter folks! We made it! On what is the longest fucking story in the AO3 fandom (at the time of my writing this) by some 130,000 words bloody hell. It turns out I can’t shut up anywhere. And keeping that in mind, go forth and read, and leave this author’s note behind! There’ll be another one at the end anyway.

_Felix_

*

_Six months later…_

_*_

A small card came with the harried looking mailman, and I opened it only to see two words and nothing else.

_Expect me._

I stared at it, then turned it this way and that looking for a time and a date, then stared at the mailman.

‘Did this come with anything else?’ I said sharply.

‘Nay, Virtuer,’ he said, then got back to his horse quickly with the attitude of someone who wasn’t looking to be interrogated about something that had nothing to do with him.

‘Ferrand,’ I said in exasperation, staring at the card, ‘when am I meant to be expecting you, exactly? Goodness.’

I shoved it into my pocket and nearly laughed. I was only three weeks into having returned from a three month stint in Esmer. Three months of trialling the new short-form curriculum with a small group of people. Ashmead insisted the class would be tiny – five to ten students at most – but it ended up being twenty five students, Corbie included. I got the impression many students pulled favours with Virtuers and that none of the Virtuers said no.

Three months of realising I might need to find a place to stay because the Silver Sparrow Inn was adequate, but guests were often sent straight up to my rooms and privacy was difficult to come by. Three months of being invited to far more social events than I thought would be possible for someone who was _technically_ a pariah. Three months of letters from concerned-to-irate parents accusing me of wishing to rape their daughters or worse, enslaving them with my magic.

Three months of Ashmead gently flirting with me when we weren’t at the Institution. Of Wyatt sometimes appearing with a carriage and near abducting me on Ferrand’s behalf, sometimes for days at a time – once I had to put in sincere apologies to the Institution, for Ferrand had worked me so hard at the Copse that I needed a full day and a half to be up and about again. He apologised profusely for it, but with that flame’s gleam that meant he felt incredibly self-satisfied to leave his mark on me so profoundly.

Three months of the Copse on alternating weekends. Of Ferrand eventually displaying me for others, and my own strange, terrified thrill that came when I realised I might like it, despite being horrified by it at the same time. Ferrand made a point of making sure Ashmead was there, and I realised it was also three months of Ferrand getting me used to the idea that he might one day share me with the Dean of the Institution.

As though I would _ever_ get used to that.

I was amenable to the idea because I knew what it was to be stupid and make ill-informed decisions and that seemed to be a potentially enjoyable one.

Three months of realising Keane wasn’t like Malkar as I thought he was. And then I became fast friends with Gisela, who I admired as a flame, and admired even more as a person. Conversations with her consisted almost fully of ribbing Ferrand whether he was there or not, in a way that made me feel as though I had a true ally. She was bright and lively, unafraid of my thaumaturgy, and had incredible taste in food, dragging me out to restaurants that offered degustation menus and explaining where everything came from in Corambis and how it was prepared.

Sometimes I would have rather not known – there was a bird prepared in the stomach lining of a cow, and it tasted delicious, but less so once I knew I was eating the stomach lining of a cow – but it also made me realise that Adelais could _cook._ I knew that from how I enjoyed her food in the first place, but she had a unique Bernathan skill that many Corambins – even the bakers – didn’t quite share. A love of yeast and flour and bread and stewed fruits and meats for different stuffing, a love of herbs fresh and dried, and I missed her and Mildmay and even Walsh fiercely.

Missing Grimglass pained me, but it was a pain that gave me hope.

This would work. Coming to Esmer to teach, going back to Grimglass to live. Two homes, both of them balancing the other out.

Corbie promised me she’d visit Grimglass one day, but it was extraordinary how full her life was, and I suspected that while she meant well, she wasn’t going to find time to leave Esmer and her busy life any time soon.

And now, back in Grimglass, the idea of Ferrand visiting with absolutely no upcoming time or date made me roll my eyes. I turned back to the lighthouse, leaning on my cane, and the wind that blew up from the cliffs tossed my hair about until I muttered in disgust and went inside.

Two days later another card came with only:

_Damn it all, I meant to write this on the first one._

Followed by a date and a time.

I laughed.

*

I took to using oneiromancy to visit Thamuris in the Khloidanikos about once every two or three weeks when I was in Grimglass. He was my friend in Troia, a heretic there for engaging in pythian casting, yet I was sure he’d be looked upon with favour by the other wizards here. Perhaps our magician-practicioners could have even looked at his _vi_ and healed him from the disease that kept him bed-ridden, his body so frail and weak while his mind was yet robust and strong.

It took time for us to find our way back to true friendship again. The shape of my personality had changed so much that I think Thamuris wondered if he truly visited with me and not an interloper sometimes. In time I believe he came to see the benefits of those changes, and I enjoyed the ability to discuss magic with someone without having to visit the Institution directly.

He was fascinated by Corambin magic, though more interested in Caloxan. He shared with me what he knew of Norvenan magic, and together we started to draw up a list of what was considered heretical where, and why.

Thamuris with his leonine golden eyes, I felt John Ashmead would have enjoyed him very much. Certainly, I did, and together we made the place we met – the ‘Dream of the Garden’ – our Khloidanikos, even more stunning than before. We learned its wisdoms, it accepted the subtle and often unconscious workings of our influence and our magic, and so we left flowers and new paths and comfortable benches for future wizards who might make their way to the Khloidanikos one day.

‘You’re happier,’ Thamuris said, one day.

‘I believe I am, yes.’

‘This is what made me doubt you in the beginning,’ Thamuris said, looking up at the flowering perseid tree above us. It had once been a dead tree, appearing after I cast the obligation d’ame on Mildmay, and over time I realised it was Mildmay in a fashion, a representation of him. To see it still flowering wildly all this time later lifted me, a feeling so huge I felt it would spill out of my skin.

‘I think also, your mind is active, but not quite as before,’ Thamuris said. ‘Before, it was like a starved rat behind the walls, always scuttling, looking for any scrap or morsel available to it. Now your mind is lively, but there are moments of calm too. I did not think you capable of still pools, Felix.’

I laughed, both in horror at how much I related to the imagery of that rat, and also at the idea that I was capable of ‘still pools.’

‘It doesn’t feel that way, trust me,’ I said. ‘Though… I no longer consult the Sibylline. Since St Vanhalie, there is simply no need. I need set no huphantike, I want no more adventures, I do not want to let my personality influence the cards to the degree that I come close to losing Mildmay again, or anyone else I care for. There are so many now. You included.’

‘I still crave it,’ Thamuris said. ‘I crave the possession and knowing the future, those voices that came through me when I engaged in pythian casting, and I shall always crave it, even though my body could never contain what I called forth. Dying in slow motion is not something I recommend, Felix, avoid it if you can. Perhaps it’s best you’ve set aside those cards.’

‘There’s so little research done into the way magic can impact our bodies, but I know I would still be able to visit labyrinths if I hadn’t exorcised the one beneath my feet on my own. It wasn’t as direct as your consequences, nor your suffering, friend, but I think there’s something to be said for what it does to us, to be a vessel for such forces. Wiser Corambins are probably studying it, given their interest in healing magic in the first place.’

‘If any of them are travellers, send them here,’ Thamuris said, smiling at me wryly.

‘I will,’ I said. ‘Though none of them seem particularly desperate to leave. Corambis is large, still quite unexplored, and many – if they travel – seem to enjoy escaping to Ygress. Something about the food, I believe.’

Thamuris grinned.

‘The food here is rather good,’ I said, laughing myself. ‘But in retrospect, the food in the Mirador was…largely more about appearance than sustenance and taste.’

‘Do you think the cooks knew the food they made there was only metaphor?’

We both burst into laughter and talked late into the night under that brilliantly flowering perseid tree; Mildmay somehow looking out for me, even now.

*

The first catalogue of books from Kora that I received from Gisela, came with little blotchy ink asterisks by about ten of the titles with notes like: _I imagine you reading this by a fireplace, when it’s storming,_ and _Please read this and think on the nature of loneliness,_ and _I couldn’t stop laughing, it’s so terrible, don’t buy it, but it’s so terrible please, you simply must, darling._

Folded into the catalogue was the first of what would become many small letters from Gisela:

_My dear Virtuer Felix Harrowgate,_

_It was a pleasure to see you during your recent visits to Esmer, and I hope to see you in the future and treat you to a lunch or dinner some time, with or without Ferrand present. He is experienced in all matters you find yourself engaging with him, but he can be lazy and cut corners at times, and if you ever have even the slightest concerns, please talk to myself or Keane._

_Keane looks like an indolent cat, I know, but I trust him with my life, and so do all under his protection. Since we have had cause to meet at the same location, rest assured that you are now also under his protection._

_We love Ferrand dearly, but he has long been without someone in this sort of engagement, and we all get rusty and we all make mistakes._

_Please tell me how you manage to condition your curls, I find myself most curious, the techniques I’m using are failing me utterly._

_Gisela._

_Post-script: Ferrand knows I’m sending this. His response was to roll his eyes and sigh like a grumbling bear, and then he stole the strawberry off my cake. He really is most intolerable and I trust you will exert a calming influence on his frankly awful personality. I’m not sure why we bother with him at all._

I found myself alternatively frowning, smiling and then laughing. Every note afterwards was in much the same vein, and I wasn’t sure where she found the time to be penning the letters, given I got the impression that her entire life was spent trying to find more hours in the day to run the Copse, her publishing house, maintain the catalogues, find new titles to publish and authors to support, as well as shadows to train and care for.

*

Richard – Vanessa’s son and Kay’s ward – returned to Grimglass, and I realised that Vanessa was right; Esmer helped her son thrive in a way that a life at Grimglass alone couldn’t quite manage.

I didn’t have much to do with him, but I saw him once or twice when Adelais dragged me down to the village on Langonec.

Once, Adelais invited Constant Westmorlin out for a drink at the inn, and we sat together – Adelais who loved her women, me who loved my men, and Constant Westmorlin who had a lively, sharp gleam in his beady, insightful eyes. His high cheekbones and pointed chin gave him the mien of someone far more austere than he was. Instead, he was fussy but exuberant, and he seemed not at all inclined to force us to worship the Holy Lady, which came as a surprise to me. He was the first religious man I’d met who didn’t seem to be hiding some secret agenda.

‘It is that I’m as firm in my love of the Holy Lady as you are in your loved ones,’ Constant Westmorlin said, all in a rush, before sipping at a glass of wine that had been fermented in the neighbouring village, known for not much else than its vintners and vignerons. Adelais had told me that we’d go there one summer, to see the grapes ripe on the vines, and the heavy trellises with snakes and rats among them. I stared at her in disgust, and she’d clapped her hands in delight like some kind of heathen.

‘Amice always told me I should have a conversation with you,’ I said, smiling.

‘Yes!’ Constant Westmorlin said. ‘He’s a lovely lad, isn’t he? I am most curious about the magic and traditions you have brought with you, and the festivals! Surely there are festivals where you’re from? Of course, I understand you are quite busy, but perhaps during the week, sometimes… I am running out of discussions and debates to have with some of the locals, you see.’

I shifted in my seat and thought of Mildmay. But when I mentioned him, Constant Westmorlin only beamed.

‘It is through Mildmay Foxe that I have come to wish discussion with you too, Virtuer,’ he said, even as he ran his nails busily along the table and tapped his feet. He gave the impression of constant movement, and in the moments of silence, his eyes darted all about the inn, as though he was taking in every detail. ‘Grimglass is lucky to have the two of you. Perhaps you put no stock in blessings, but to me it is one all the same. And if you ever leave, I hear tell that the magic and engineering in the lighthouse is such that the light will continue to run for decades, even centuries after?’

He picked up his wine and sipped at it, staring off into the distance with an avid, hungry light in his eyes.

‘Yes, that is fascinating,’ he said. ‘Now, anyway, are we calling them South Corambins yet? Or Caloxans still?’

And that set Adelais off into a huge rant about how Caloxans would always be Caloxans, no matter that the country of Caloxa had ceded victory to Corambis and they were all basically the same anyway; according to Westmorlin.

Having met Caloxans like Kay, Bernathans like Adelais and Corambins like Murtagh, I was inclined to disagree. But I was happy enough to listen and learn. Adelais spoke with a breadth of experience that indicated – not for the first time – that she’d come from a learned, educated, privileged history. I had not the faintest idea how she ended up a housekeeper in Grimglass.

When I asked her about it on the way home, Langonec picking his way up the path in a princely manner, she simply laughed.

‘I’ve been all over, and done all manner of things,’ she said. ‘Can say with conviction you shouldn’t swim in the juices of the wife of a Mayor when he can walk in and see you.’

I stared at the back of her head as she began hawking out peals of rough, coarse laughter.

‘Aye, I thought she’d come with me! Never did, her loss. Were in love, we were, but it was a sunny day love, it couldn’t handle a little rain.’

‘Fair weather,’ I said quietly.

‘Aye,’ Adelais said, quietening.

‘Is there anyone special now?’

‘Aye,’ she said, turning to look back at me, her eyes flashing. But then she grinned wickedly and faced forwards once more, her dexterous hands dropping down to rub vigorously at Langonec’s neck. ‘I love Langonec. He’s the only one for me.’

She began to laugh once more, then reached back without looking and poked me in the thigh of my good leg until I had to slap her hand away. She kept reaching round to do it until we started giggling like the kind of children I’d never had the opportunity to be. After a while she leaned back into me with all the confidence of someone who didn’t know I was just as likely to fall off the horse as catch her weight.

‘ _Is_ someone I fancy,’ she said, looking up at the sky. ‘But it’s Grimglass, and she’s shy, so I can wait.’

‘Do I know her?’

‘Ever been to the bakery?’ she said. 

I blinked several times and then stared down at her innocent sky-gazing face. ‘Adelais,’ I said slowly, ‘when you leave me at the bakery to go behind to ‘pick up some special supplies’ what _exactly_ are you doing?’

‘Hush,’ she said, sitting straight and taking the reins once more, encouraging Langonec into a pretty trot that had me holding onto Adelais.

‘Adelais!’

‘Shush,’ she said.

I was tempted to poke her in the ribs all the way home, but I didn’t trust her not to unseat the both of us, and I didn’t want my leg to deal with the consequences of a fall. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to feel that outraged. And Adelais certainly didn’t need to bring me into the village. It took me some time to realise that she did it far more for my benefit, than she did for her own, even if we did end up as friends because of it.

*

I received more letters from Corbie and Ashmead, though much of them were focused on my lessons and the practice of working with aethereals. I received a letter from Isobel, a ‘welcome to the family’ that was charming, diplomatic and wholly unexpected, given Kay went on about Isobel – his half-sister – as though she was a curse upon the entire land.

There was also a letter from Clovis, penned as though a child had written it, and my heart felt like it skipped a beat when I saw his signature.

_Dear Felix Harrowgate,_

_Thank you. For my brother being happy. And for my happiness. And for making those friends of mine happy too. We have called the kitten Felix, which annoys Ferrand, which also makes me happy._

_If you ever hear from my friends, please let me know._

_Clovis Carey._

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the dead energies and ghosts that were attached to him had moved on, especially since he was struggling to do the same. I was sure that as he came to live more in the world around him, he would gain many more friends than the spirits who wouldn’t leave him alone.

Or perhaps I only hoped it.

But among the growing stack of letters in my room, I kept his letter on the top of the pile. On nights when I couldn’t sleep for nightmares of Malkar, or Lorenzo, or Keeper, or memories of madness or insanity, or the Clock of Eclipses, or nightmares of losing Mildmay to the Winter Fever that nearly took his life… my fingers traced over those scratchy, shaky, clumsy letters and I told myself that I mattered now, and was more able to believe it than I could before on those dark, lost and lonely nights.

*

I wasn’t quite sure when Walsh went from ‘Mildmay’s kind of man’ to a friend. It happened slowly, I think, or perhaps I didn’t notice that he went from a kind of nervousness or indifference around me, to actively asking me for my opinion on matters and behaving as though he cared about what I had to say.

One unusually cold morning, I sat before the fire massaging out my calf, for it was being particularly stubborn. Walsh came over and sat next to me, less stooped than he used to be now that Pecton was apparently working on everyone in the household.

‘I was raised on stories of Mulkists,’ Walsh said in his reedy, high voice. ‘Y’see, my grandfather was a slave to one. He died that way. Started off a right strong man with his own mind, and a magician came along and bound him with evil magic, and he barely knew us after that. When he died, it was doing some impossible task set for him, mayhaps as a punishment, I’ll never know.’

I stared at the fire and thought of all the things I forced Mildmay to do under the obligation d’ame. All the things that could have killed him. The things that put him under the notice of Malkar Gennadion.

‘It’s a monstrous thing,’ I said, digging my finger punishingly hard into a knot and grunting.

‘Didn’t want to live with a magician,’ Walsh said quietly. ‘Not any from here, not any from nowhere else either. They said they were sending you here, I never got a choice. This has been my lighthouse all my life, you know. Grice died such a long time ago. Long before me. There’s always been a keeper. My father was a keeper, his father was a keeper.’

‘And now you are its keeper,’ I said quietly, looking at him.

I couldn’t believe that I’d never considered what it must have cost Walsh to have his home taken over this way. I’d claimed a level for myself without considering him at all, thinking that if I were going to be forced to live in a grim stone tower, I was going to have a floor of it for myself.

‘Hated it, at first,’ Walsh said.

I had no idea if he meant being the keeper of a lighthouse, or if he meant Mildmay and I arriving and turning his life upside down.

‘Thought an old dog couldn’t learn new tricks, and I didn’t want to. But Mildmay, he was good. He’s a good lad. He was raised right.’

I swallowed down the ugly laughter that wanted to bubble up. Mildmay was raised to cardsharp, he was fucked by his Keeper when he was too ugly to be put out to seduce people as a young teenager, and then he was raised to assassination before he was an adult.

It was a miracle that Mildmay had turned out the way he had. I loved him for it.

‘I know I didn’t…treat you that well when we arrived,’ I said hesitantly, ‘and I’m-’

‘I’m trying to say something,’ Walsh said imperiously, and I stared at him, my eyebrows lifting. Being a Virtuer only mattered outside of the lighthouse, it never mattered in here. I gestured for him to continue, after he was silent for a time.

‘I like it,’ he said, his lips lifting, ‘is what I’m trying to say. I’m not asking for an apology. I’m trying to tell you that I like you lighting the fires with what Mildmay calls hocus – I like hocus so much more than all the formal terms we’re supposed to use. I like Mildmay fixing up the lighthouse and giving us plumbing, and by the Holy Lady’s knickers, _hot fucking water._ I even like Adelais, but you’re _not_ to tell her.’

‘I swear it,’ I said, with a small smile.

‘Thought I was basically done with life,’ Walsh said quietly, the swollen knuckles of his fingers looking painful as he fidgeted. ‘Thought I was done. This lighthouse does things to people. Used to have haunted dreams here. And then you came along and you even fixed that. Though…made me trust you less for a while.’

‘Yes,’ I said softly. ‘I can see why.’

‘But even without the empty voices ringing out, this lighthouse does things to you. Makes you lonely. Leaves you on a cliff in the middle of nowhere. I think you felt that more than anyone else here. Anyway. Thanks for making the fires.’

‘You can always wake me in the morning if you need them done earlier.’

‘Nah,’ Walsh said, standing. ‘I’ve seen you in the morning. Rather not risk getting my head torn off. I’m just glad you’re not evil, is all. Brought about a good change in the winds, you did. Never thought a magician would bring about a fair change like that, but you did.’

He hobbled off back down to his room, and I stared after him. No one in my entire life had ever said I was capable of bringing about a good or fair change in their lives. I was always the curse, the bad luck, the poorly fated, the one who heralded death and misery for everyone around me.

I thought of Stephen Teverius and felt a swift pang of pain all the way through me. I wished he could see me now, I wished I could meet him not as the wounded child I’d been around him, but the person I’d become.

Maybe he’d understand. Maybe he, too, might see that I wasn’t just a bane upon humanity, or a thorn in his side to make every action he took in the Mirador that much harder.

I began waking earlier to light the fires so Walsh didn’t have to ask, and went to bed earlier to make up for the lost sleep. I came to realise – Adelais dragging me outside one dark morning as I complained, our coats whipping violently around us as gulls cried and shrieked – that the dawn as the sun crept up over the ocean was breathtaking.

*

The day Murtagh came to visit me, I half-expected to be taken up to my room and immediately debauched, but instead he took me down to the woods near the lighthouse like he had so many months ago. Over a year, now. There were no more blueberries on the bushes, but he pointed out other wonders to me, naming the birds by their calls, explaining how they lived their feathered lives. I loved that he wasn’t only a warrior, or a Duke, but also this person who was eager to share his boyish knowledge with someone who wanted to learn it.

Sometimes he stopped by some large, graceful tree, and he’d press me back against the bark and kiss me, or bite at my neck, and once he pulled down my shirt and coat and bit so hard at my collarbone that I cried out sharply, my hand coming up far too late to clap over my mouth. He dragged my hand away to make a point.

‘I’ve _missed_ you,’ he said.

‘I’ve been right here,’ I said. ‘You’ve had me for three months in Esmer.’

‘Quiet,’ he said. He kissed me until my lips were swollen, my skin scraped pink by the stubble on his jaw. I breathed heavily, my head alongside his, and draped my arms over his shoulders and knew I’d missed him too. A feeling I cherished because he always returned.

‘Oh,’ I said, remembering. ‘If I were to send you, ah, explicit letters from time to time, is Wyatt going to read them? Is there a way he could simply pass them onto you without reading them?’

Murtagh’s chuckle was low, almost a growl, as he pressed me back into the tree for no other reason apparently than to make sure that he was keeping me in place.

‘Let him read them.’

‘Murtagh, you can’t be-’

‘Felix, he _found_ you,’ Murtagh said, staring at me, his amber eyes glittering in the morning light. ‘Do you think he’s such an innocent as all that? I hired him because I needed someone who wouldn’t flinch at working with a flame. If anything, it will inspire him to go and take some time off sometimes, find his own satisfaction.’

I’d never even considered it.

‘You were going to send me explicit letters?’ Murtagh said. ‘May I do the same?’

‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep,’ I said. ‘I know how busy you get, how behind you are on your paperwork.’

‘Telling you the ways I’m going to fuck you isn’t _paperwork,’_ Murtagh said. ‘Anyway, send your letters. Gisela tells me she’s been writing to you and telling you what a cad I am.’

‘I appreciate it,’ I said lightly. ‘Since I’ve always known it myself, it’s good to have some solidarity.’

His hands tightened around my waist, fingers digging possessively and painfully into my skin, and his eyes promised dark deeds and the sounds I would make when he had me beneath him in my own room. There was no word for the feeling of apprehension and anticipation that twined together, the fear and need that woke some running wild beast inside me, inspiring the need to run away, to run right into him and never let go.

Later still, we sat side by side in a shaft of light permitted by the canopy, and I half-slept as he stroked my hair. I thought he’d ask me to take his cock into my mouth, but he didn’t. He petted me like a cat, and we talked here and there about Clovis, about Isobel, about Julian and Amice, about Mildmay and his latest engineering project, about Ashmead, about this strange family of people around us. I’d gone from having a brother, to having a network of people about me who behaved as though I was an effortless part of their lives, as though it didn’t hurt them to have me near them.

‘I never thought I’d say this,’ I said, wrapping the stem of a daisy around Murtagh’s idle hand until the flower was positioned like a gemstone on the back of his hand. ‘But my life is better for being a shadow.’

‘For a long time your life wasn’t better for it,’ Murtagh said, considering his daisy ring before his hand relaxed once more.

‘And we can keep doing this, can’t we? I sometimes fear…further exile, or that the hatred that has come in response to teaching at the Women’s College will ruin everything. Moments like this don’t last in my life, Murtagh.’

‘Some things do,’ he said soberly. ‘Despite so many forces pulling you both apart – including you, sometimes – you still have your brother. You have your magic, despite surrendering it to the Circle. I understand fearing what losses might come. I’m older than you, I fear that death might come to me sooner rather than later. I fear you’ll become determined to travel back to your homeland. But being a flame teaches us to master the fears of our shadows, and some of that mastery is something I need too. I have to master my own shadows also.’

‘And I must master mine.’

‘When I’m not mastering them for you,’ he said, taking up a hank of my hair and tugging on it a few times, a heavy feeling in my gut as my cock paid attention. But he went back to stroking my hair with his open palm, and I went back to half-falling asleep.

I loved him. I loved him in a way that hurt less and less, in a way that became easier with time. I had always assumed when I was younger, when I knew Malkar, that love was something that had to hurt in order to be real. It had to be proven, over and over again, because it was always doubted. Love was that feeling that splintered everything apart, its own agony, and so of course it made sense to me that so many musicians sung of it, and so many plays were written about it.

It seemed the most painful emotion in existence.

Even when I met Mildmay and loved him, it was excruciating until it wasn’t.

But here I was, near-dozing on his lap, and it was easy.

It was so easy.

And when his fingers found the tears on my face, and Ferrand made a sound of concern and shock, I shook my head and held him close and didn’t know how to tell him about the gratitude I felt.

I’d learned it first with Mildmay, and now I was learning it again, and it was its own kind of alchemy that I would never understand, even with so many secrets of magic and thaumaturgy at my fingertips.

Grimglass doves called nearby, and then allspice sparrows that Ferrand said were migratory. It was amazing to me that we could be not that far from the lighthouse, but the woods muffled the sounds of the gulls and turned the world to quietude. It left us with the almost watery sound of the wind moving through the leaves, sounding like waterfalls at times, like rain at others. I watched grass bending nearby, feeling that as those little daisies belonged in this world, so did I.

‘If we fall asleep out here, we’ll regret it,’ he said with a voice far sleepier than it had been before.

‘You leave me sore anyway,’ I said.

‘Poor little rabbit,’ he said, stroking my cheek. ‘You put up with so much.’

He drew me up and we embraced, and then I turned back in the direction of the lighthouse, where Mildmay was looking over blueprints he’d drawn up himself, and Adelais was reading a book so salacious she kept reading sections to us at night while laughing raucously – I had never heard the word cunt so many times in so few paragraphs. I found myself looking forward to the moment we’d see the lighthouse once we left the woods, longing for the warmth behind those double doors, the meal waiting for us, my strange family that seemed small, but was larger than I could have ever dreamed.

‘Well, come on,’ I said, as Ferrand twined his fingers with mine, still wearing a daisy on his finger. ‘Let’s go home.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2020 has been a clusterfuck of a year in which I wrote the bulk of this story, and I was very glad to escape from my own ennui (and that of this year in general) into Felix’s, because he’s so much more openly melodramatic than I am (I think) which made this fic feel pretty cathartic at times! 
> 
> I’m hugely thankful to everyone in the fandom who took a risk on a complete fucking rarepair (I ship Mildmay/Felix too, but Murtagh/Felix wouldn’t leave me alone and I literally couldn't find it anywhere, it wasn't until I started writing this story that I learned that there were some snippets on an LJ kink meme and some fills that led to broken links and that was it), and I'm thankful to everyone outside of the fandom who took a risk on a story with a lot of worldbuilding for something you weren’t familiar with! I’m grateful to all of you, every lurker, every person who bookmarked (privately or publicly), who left kudos, who talked about it to a friend, and to the MVPs who left comments (both now and in the future). 
> 
> I’m super grateful to Silvia/morbidlizard for betaing despite having an incredibly tough year on top of incredibly tough general circumstances, she’s a great beta, and an even better friend.
> 
> In case you missed it, there’s [a playlist for The Beast that Chose Its Own Bridle](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5OA6jFWIqkgk8OCjzenohG?si=Wf44lrPxSMyE5Py2sNVmGg), and you might like it! And in case you didn’t know, I have another account of original works and some other stuff over at [not_poignant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_poignant/works) and I’d love to see you there too. But if not, thanks for the journey! You've all made it an incredible one. :)


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